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

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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$At Peking Ike name kuang tsing i.s applied, to Poly- gonatum macropodum, Turcz., and P. chine use, Ktli., both wild and cultivated. The roots are eaten. In the Peking mountains these plants are more generally known by the name tlien t.slao ken (sweet root) and distinguished as large-leaved and small-leaved. Loureiro \_Fl. cochin., 99] applies the Chinese name hoam dm [huang tsing) to Galium tuberosum (a dubious plant) and states that the root of this plant is eaten boiled. Tatab. [Cat., 10] identifies erroneously the drug huang tsing with Radix Caragance Jiavce. He refers it evidently to Loureiro’s jRobinia Jiava, sinice hoam khin [FI. cochin., 556]. P. Smith, 51, has the same erroneous identification, but the sweet mucilaginous drug huang tsing which he describes is Polygonatum. The drug huang tsing I obtained from a Peking apothecary shop, was the root of a Polygonatum. Cust. Med., p. 342 (52):—Huang tsing exported 1885 from Canton to other ports of China 64 piculs,—p. 210 (22) from Wen chou 64,—p. 186 (39) from Ningpo 12.—Small quantities also exported from Amoy and Swatow. Sieb., CEcon., 76 :—Convallaria midtijiora, var. odora [Polygonatum). Japonice narukojuri; sinice ]§£ Radices rarius eduntur. So moku, VI, 6 :—^Polygonatum multifiorum, All.— Ibid,, VI, 7, ]li fw (large-leaved huang tsing) P. cana- liculatum, Pursli. 8.—^ H wei jui. P., XIla, 35. T., CXL1I, CXXX. Pen king:—Wei jui (the second character means pendent twigs or leaves), ~f£ I|| nil wei [comp. Rh ya, 52]. The root is officinal. Taste sweet. Nature uniform. Nou-poisonous.$