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.

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    of Rumphius, Galanga root, = Alpinia Galanga, Sw. Pale yellow flowers. Root and seeds used in medicine by the Chinese. Tatar., Cat., 26, 3d :—Kao Hang Vang or Hang ldang, Galanga. Williams [Chin. Commerc. Guide 120] has Ac Hang Vang, Galangal, the root of Alpinia Galanga. The seeds of the same plant are used as aromatic medicine under the name of hung tou Vou. Ibid. [p. 84] the same seeds are called kao Hang Vang tsz1.—Hanb. [.Sc. pap., 107, 252] describes and figures the fruit capsules received from Shanghai under the name of kao Hang Vang tsz1 or hung tou Vou. They proved to belong to Alpinia Galanga.— P. Smith, 9, 10. Another kind of Galanga, the lesser or Chinese Galanga of commerce, the Galanga minor of Rumphius, is referred in the Flora Ilongk. [349] to Alpinia chinensis, Rose., a plant of smaller stature than the A. Galanga, known from Canton more than one hundred years ago. But in 1873 Dr. Hance described [in the Journ. Linn. Soc., XIII] a plant which had been presented to him by Taintor as growing wild and cultivated in the island of Hai nan and called Hang Vang by the Chinese. Hance named it Alpinia ofji- cinarum, and believes that this yields the true Chinese Galanga. It has white flowers, veined with dull red. It would seem from the ancient Chinese accounts above translated regarding the tu jo and the kao Hang Vang, that the first is the Galanga minor, the second the Galanga major. But probably the above names were applied to different species of Alpinia in various parts of China. Marco Polo [Yule’s 2nd edition, II, 207, 208] mentions the galingale produced in immense quantities in the kingdom of Fu ju (province of Fu kien), and also in Java [II, 254]. Dr. Fr. Hirth thinks [China Review, II, 97] that the name Galanga