Weeds in a small world
Last week I got a new book, Chinese Medicinal Plants, Herbal Drugs and Substitutes: An Identification Guide by Christine Leon and Lin Yu-Lin. Published by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew (UK) and Institute for Medicinal Plant Development, Beijing, the 10 lb. tome tells how to identify live plants, as well as the form found in markets. All plants in the book are official drugs in the Chinese Pharmacopeia of 2015, meaning that they are recognized and defined by authority of the Chinese government. Similarly, the United States Pharmacopeia, published since 1820, and its organizing body of the same name set the standards of identity and purity of drugs sold in the United States.
In flipping through the colorful volume, I was first struck by the number of plants that grow wild in Eureka Springs. There is our common red/orange-flowered trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) the dried flowers of which are used in prescriptions to treat menstrual irregularities, postpartum breast lumps and itchy rashes. A substitute for them are the flowers of the royal paulownia tree (Paulownia tomentosa), you know, the tree with the giant thimble-shaped purple flowers in spring?
A few pages later an official drug is the pollen of cattails, the same species found here (Typha latifolia), indicated for treating abnormal uterine bleeding, blood in the urine, abdominal pain, vomiting of blood, nosebleed, and coughing of blood. Our weedy perilla (Perilla frutescens) dried stems (plenty around now) are indicated for abdominal distention and morning sickness. The seeds, an all-together separate drug, are used to treat cough, constipation and shortness of breath.
Turn the page, and there is the weedy, invasive tree of heaven or stink tree (Ailanthus altissima), the bark of which is used in prescriptions for diarrhea and blood in the stools. You know the so-called overpriced “goji” berries in the health food trade? The bark of the stem, also called Chinese wolfberry (Lycium chinense), is used for fevers, night sweat with cough, and nosebleed. It grows on the hillside between Spring Street and Spring Garden Street.
This is a small sampling. Just from A-L in the alphabet, I counted 37 species of Chinese drug plants growing wild in Eureka Springs (as non-native, mostly weeds, some of which are invasive), and I didn’t count the cultivated plants such as peonies. One person’s herb is another’s weed. And I didn’t count Cannabis spp. as weed, also officinal in the Chinese Pharmacopeia, but not in the United States Pharmacopeia.