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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$Pie lu:—The wei jui is also called 3? Yf IP1 °^IU (jade bamboo) and fifjf ti tsie (earth nodes). It grows in the valleys of the T‘ai shan mountain [in Shan tung, App. 322]. The root is dug up in the beginning of spring and dried in the sun. In the dictionary Shuo wen [A.D. 100] the plant is called 1H wei i, in the Wu Plu [3rd cent.] it is ^ ^ wei ju i. T‘ao Hung-king :—The wei jui is a common plant. Its root resembles that of the huang tsing [?\ 7] but is smaller. The people eat it. Su Sung [11th cent.]:—The plant is common in Ch‘u chou [in An hui, App. 25], in Shu chou [in An hui, App. 294], in Han chung [S. Shen si], in Kim chou [in Hu pei, App. 172]. The stem is straight like a bamboo arrow-shaft; the leaves are narrow and long, white on the upper side, green below. It is a kind of huang tsing. The root is of the thickness of a finger, covered with radical fibres, one or two feet long, edible. The flowers appear in the third month, and are of a green colour. The fruit is globular (berry). Li Shi-chen :—It is a common plant in the mountains. Its root grows in a horizontal direction like that of the huang tsing, but is smaller, of a yellowish white colour, soft, covered with many radical fibres. It is very difficult to dry. The leaves grow two and two together, resemble bamboo- leaves. The plant is very easily propagated from the roots. The leaves and the root both are eaten boiled. Kiu huang [LI, 3] and Ch. [VII, 14] sub wei jui, representations of a Polygonatum. Han., Sc. pap., 255, examined and described the drug received from Shanghai under the name of yil elm$