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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    dentated. The branches (petioles ?) are black, the stem is covered with hair. The root is dug up in the 3rd and 9th months. It is hairy, has hands, feet, a face and eyes like a man possessed of a god. T:ao Hung-king :—Shang tang (the locality mentioned in the Pie hi) is south-west of Ki chon [Northern part of present Chi li, App. 119]. The drug which now comes from that locality is a long root of a yellow colour resembling the fang feng [an umbelliferous plant. See below, 31]. It is succulent and sweet, and highly valued. The drug brought from Po tsi [in the present Corea, App. 261] is slender and hard, of a white colour. In taste it is weaker than the Shang tang drug. There is a third sort produced in Kao li [Corea, App. 116]. This is the same as the Liao tung drug [mentioned in the Pie la]. It is of large size but devoid of juice, soft and inferior to that from Po tsi. But the best of all is the Shang tang drug.0 The plant sends up only one straight stalk. Its leaves are four or five together (i.e. four or five leaflets at the top of a common petiole). The flowers are of a purple colour. There is a Corean song in praise of the Ginseng (jgi H A il? fit) saying: the branches (petioles) which grow from my stalk are three in number, and my leaves are five by five. The back part of the leaves is turned to the sky, the upper side downwards. Whoever would find me must look for the f§| kia tree. T‘ao Hung- king explains that the kia tree resembles the thing (Paulownia), growing very high and casting a large shade.7 In this kind of place the Ginseng is found in great abundance. The gathering and preparing of the drug require a great deal of experience. There is some Ginseng found at present 8 Nowaday?, on the contrary, the Ginseng from Liao tung, Manchuria and the northern part of Corea is considered the best. No Ginseng is now produced in S.E. Shan si or ancient Shang tang. 7 Regarding the kia tree, see liot. sin., II, 220.