Chinese herb industry revealed
Anew book, 25 years in the making, has shed new light on the trade in Chinese medicinal plants. For the first time in the west, medical botanist Christine Leon, based at Kew Gardens, with Beijing-based co-author Lin Yu-Lin describes 226 herbal drugs sourced from over 400 species used in Chinese herbal medicine and regularly traded in the UK.
The task took Christine to 21 of China’s 34 provinces, not just to source authentic and high quality Chinese medicines, but also to reveal all the common substitutes, adulterants and counterfeit plant products used in an expanding global trade, currently worth over £66.8 billion. “Some plants will be very familiar to British gardeners,” said Christine. “Gardenia, honeysuckles,honeysuckle forsythia, fritillaria and peonies have all been ascribed medicinal properties and used in Chinese medicines.”
Although much of the industry is Chinese Government-sponsored and sourced from commercial farms, 60-70 per cent of species such as Fritillaria cirrhosa and F. delavayi, source of China’s top-selling cough remedies, are still wild harvested. “This vast and continuously evolving industry is integrated into China’s vast national health system,” said Christine. “Over centuries growers have selected medicinal strains of plants, such as citrus and peonies, to improve their medicinal properties, but few are formally named.”
Published by Kew ‘Chinese Medicinal Plants, Herbal Drugs and Substitutes: an identification guide’ by Christine Leon is aimed at practitioners, health regulators and conservation managers.