Subject area	Biology, pharmacology
More specific subject area	Ethnobotany, medicinal plants
Type of data	Table, text file, graph
How data was acquired	Data set was created by selecting articles that meet the pre-determined criteria
Data format	Raw and processed
Experimental factors	Data used in this article were obtained from selected articles that focused on medicinal plants used to treat and manage respiratory infections and related symptoms, and those that highlighting the use of plants for these ailments in South Africa. The pre-determined criteria for the selection: (1) the articles highlighted or focused on medicinal plants used to treat and manage respiratory infections and related symptoms in South Africa, (2) the identity of the utilized species is indicated, (3) the articles were published between 1950 and 2017, (4) the articles are written in English, and (5) articles published as abstract, letters and data that could not be extracted or overlapped with data from other articles were excluded
Experimental features	Data were checked for completeness, reliability and descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages were used in the analysis
Data source location	South Africa
Data accessibility	The data are available with this article