**5. Conclusions**

The results support the potential use of DNA barcoding in discriminating closely related taxa of Caryophyllales. The ITS2 was more effective in the discrimination between studied species, indicating its potential for distinguishing between Caryophyllales medicinally important plants and non-medicinal plants or other undesirable plant tissues. However, due to the inability of one DNA barcoding analysis method to discriminate between members of closely related genera, we propose combining two or more methods. The results of this study could fill a small gap of generating DNA barcodes for local (i.e., the UAE), regional (i.e., the Arab Gulf region), and global libraries of vascular plant flora.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https: //www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/d14040262/s1, Table S1: List of specimen samples used in this study. Table S2: Information on ecological characteristics and medicinal benefits of studied plant species, Table S3: List of Primers with their thermal profile used in this study.

**Author Contributions:** K.A.M., A.E.-K. and R.J. conceived the ideas and designed the experiment; R.J., S.G., H.S. and T.M. collected the samples; R.J., K.A.S., E.A.H., M.A.S. and M.A.J. performed the Laboratory analysis; R.J. conducted the bioinformatics analysis; R.J., K.A.S., E.A.H., M.A.S., M.A.J., S.G., H.S. and T.M. were involved in data validation and curation; R.J., K.A.S., E.A.H., M.A.S., M.A.J., S.G., H.S. and T.M. prepared the original draft; K.A.M. and A.E.-K. reviewed and edited the manuscript; K.A.M. and A.E-K were involved in project supervision, administration, and funding acquisition. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by a collaborative research gran<sup>t</sup> from the University of Sharjah and Sharjah Research Academy, project # 1702145054-P.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable. **Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are openly available in the NCBI GenBank (Table S1).

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
