Our cross cultural nature
Recently I received a copy of a new book from Kew Publishing in the UK, the publishing arm of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, one of the premier botanical institutions in the world. Co-authored by Christine Leon and Lin Yu-lin, Chinese Medicinal Plants, Herbal Drugs and Substitutes: An Identification Guide, is a massive tome with more than 3000 photographs covering 226 Chinese herbal drugs, representing about half of the source plants in herbal medicine found in the current (2015) edition of the Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China.
A pharmacopeia is an official (government sanctioned) work that essentially describes the drugs, their specifications, identity and authentication of those drugs deemed “recognized” by the regulating authority in a country or region. For example, the United States Pharmacopeia describes the “drugs” official in the U.S., periodically updated (now every year) since 1820. When you see “USP” on a drug or product label it means it conforms to USP standards. The Chinese Pharmacopeia is remarkable for recognizing 500 medicinal herbs.
In flipping through the pages of the book, I was struck by the number of plants that I see walking from my house on Spring Street to the Post Office, barely seven-tenths of a mile away. There are easily two dozen different plant species, planted in gardens or thriving as weeds, on the short walk that are in the Chinese Pharmacopeia. We have paper mulberry (Brousonettia papyrifera), the fruits of which are used as a diuretic in kidney ailments.
Near the library is a patch of “air potato” (Dioscorea polystachya), the roots of which are prepared to treat anorexia and chronic diarrhea. Overhead is our ubiquitous pink-flowered mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) of which both the inner bark and flower buds are used to treat anxiety.
The ubiquitous jin-yin-hua (gold and silver flower), better known as Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is a common ingredient in cold, fever, and upper respiratory tract infections in Chinese prescriptions. Add to the list peonies, perilla, burdock, forsythia and many more familiar plants.
Use of plants as medicine often reflects a cultural context. Like our culture is a melting pot of human origins, our local flora is a melting pot of plants introduced from other places. Nonetheless, native plants still dominate our flora (70+ percent).
How many native people do you know locally? It seems that alien human introductions have displaced the native humans.