STUDIES ON THE QUALITIES OF THE CHINESE LICORICE——COMPARATIVE STUDIES ON THE WILD LICORICE OF NORTHEAST CHINA

Most of the Chinese licorice are the dried roots and rhizomes of the wild plant Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch. The quality of the commercial samples vary very much depending on some factors, such as the environmental conditions, the seasons of reaping, the different morphological parts used, the age of the plants, etc. This investigation employed 18 licorice samples, 15 of which were collected by ourselves in different seasons in 1962 as fresh and air-dried samples, including roots and rhizomes growing in the steppes in the west districts of Jilin Province as well as on the sandhills in the west regions of Heilongjiang Province, while the three commercial samples were obtained from local drug dealers and used for comparison. In this article the macroscopical and microscopical features of the samples are compared in details and illustrated with plates. The percentage contents of water-soluble extractives, glycyrrhizic acid, total reducing sugar, starch and gummy matter, ash, acidinsoluble ash, moisture, etc., have been also determined. The results of macroscopical and microscopical examination indicated that the root collected from the sandhills is comparatively thicker, heavier, having nearly no bitter taste, and more reddish-brown in colour than that from the steppes and also possesses a higher percentage of the area of reserve parenchyma (Plate 5). The number of starch granules per milligram of the different powdered licorice samples were determined by the Wallis' lycopodium method and the results indicated that the number of stach granules present in the autumn-reaped roots and rhizomes is greater than those of spring- and summer-reaped ones (table 4.). The analyses for water-soluble extractives and glycyrrhizic acid indicated that the content of water-soluble extractives in the summer-reaped ones is the lowest of all seasonal samples, whereas the lowest contents of glycyrrhizic acid is in the autumn-reaped samples. The results of analyses of the main constituents in all of the 18 samples are as follows: water-soluble extractives, 18.70—40.54%; glycyrrhizic acid,3.63—13.06%; total reducing sugar, 3.38—13.67%; starch and gummy matter, 2.04—6.32%; moisture, 6.04—8.44%; ash, 3.35—6.68%; acid-insoluble ash, 0.28—2.11%; water-soluble ash, 0.49—1.73%. Except the slender rhizomes (their diameters below 5 mm) which possess the lowest contents, the samples assayed conform fully to the requirements of the pharmacopoeia of most countries. The author maintains that licorice should be collected and garbled separately according to their qualitics and used for different purpose.