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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$Pie lu:—Other names : ^ ti huai (ground Sophora), ^ tcu huai, l|jjj [ Jciao huai, Q ^ pai heng (white stem), ^ j«: Pin heng, Q lit pai (green and white), £S[$ ling lang, /jg jjj^( 7m ?na (tiger's hemp). The Pu shen grows in Ju nan [in Ho nan, App. 110] in the mountains and in fields. The root is dug up in the 3rd, 8th and 10th months and dried in the sun. T‘ao Hitng-king :—It is a common plant in Mid China. The leaves have a strong resemblance to those of the huai (Sophora japonica). Yellow flowers. The fruit is a pod. The root is very hitter. Su Sung [11th cent.]:—The root is of a yellow colour, from five to seven inches and more long. From three to five stems issue from it, three to four feet high. The leaves are very like those of the huai and deciduous. Flowers yellowish white. Fruit (or seeds) small beans. Li Shi-chen likens the pods of the plant to the siliqua of the radish. Other names ^ ^ ye (wild) huai, 'pj* Pu hi (bitter bone). Ch.j VIII, 5 :—K'u shen. Rude drawing. Leguminous plant. Lour., FI. cochin., 556 :—Robinia amara, Cochinchina, China, sinice Jehu sem. Radix subcarnosa, multiplex luteo- fusca, amarissima. Ibid., 555 :—R. mitis. Same Chinese name. Both these species are known only from Loureiro’s description. Tatar., Cat., 33 :—Klu shen. Radix Robinice amara' [Tatarinov evidently relies upon Loureiro’s identification]. —P. Smith, 186. I have seen the drug Pu. shen, obtained from \\ en chou fu, transversally cut slices of an exceedingly bitter root, one inch in diameter.$