Botanicon Sinicum: notes on Chinese botany from native and Western sources. Part 3, Botanical investigations into the materia medica of the ancient Chinese / [E. Bretschneider].

  • Emil Bretschneider
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Botanicon Sinicum: notes on Chinese botany from native and Western sources. Part 3, Botanical investigations into the materia medica of the ancient Chinese / [E. Bretschneider]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    111/638 (page 101)
    Su Sung [11th cent.]:—The plant grows in Slien si [App. 284], Ch‘uan Shu [Sz ch‘uan. App. 26] and in the mountains of Kiang tung [An liui, Kiang su, etc., App. 124], the best is that from Shu ChTian (Sz ch‘uan). Its leaves resemble those of the shut Jcliu \CEnanthe. See 250], the hu sui (Coriandrum), the she chluang (Cnidium). They grow in a bushy manner, but the stem is slender. The leaves are very fragrant. The people of Kiang tung and Shu gather them for preparing a beverage. It flowers in the 7th or 8th month. Small white flowers like those of the she chluang. The root is hard and poor, of a yellowish black colour. The drug which comes from Kuan chung [Shen si, App. 158] consists of compact masses resembling the brain of a bird, whence the name ^ j]^ ^ tsio nao (bird’s-brain) kung. This is very potent. Li Shi-chen :—The best sort conies from Hu Jung [N.E. Tibet, App. 82]. Ancient authors call it ma hien kung kliung, from the resemblance of the root with its joints to a horse’s bit. Another kind is called tsio nao hang. That from Kuan chung [Shen si, App. 158] is called [ king kung, also jftj [ si kung, that produced in Shu (Sz clihian) is J|[ [ clkuan kung, that brought from T‘ien t‘ai [in Che kiang, App. 340] is called [ tlai kung, that from Kiang nan [App. 124] is Jjitt [ fa kung. In Shu (Sz chTian) the kung kli,ung is much cultivated. The leaves continue without withering till late in autumn. The root is perennial. The JH [ clruan kung is figured in the Kiu huang [XLVI, 31], only leaves and the root, a nodular roundish mass. Evidently an umbelliferous plant. See also CL, XXV, 4. Tatar., Cat., 18:—^ J|| the great kung from Sz ch'uan, Rad. tuberosa Levistici?.—Gauger [12]:—The same