NOTES ON THE BOTANICAL NAMES OF SOME CHINESE MEDICINAL PLANTS(Ⅱ)PAI-TOU-WUNG AND TSING-CHIEH

Research work in recent years reports that over ten species of plants from different families have been producing the Chinese drug Pai-tou-wung.Basing on the description of ancient herbals concerning this drug and the modern usage of it,the a uthorbelieves that standard Pai-tou-wung is the root of Pulsatilla chinensis,a ranun- culaceous plant.According to some plant taxonomists,genus Pulsatilla is inse- parable from genus Anemone.Hence,the name Anemone chinensis Bge.was given to the same plant.Since Pulsatilla possesses some more specialized morphological features,such as long plumose style,sessile and more or less united involucre, it is feasible to treat it as an independent genus. Anemone cernua Thunb.(=Pulsatilla cernua Bercht.) is another name for Pai-tou-wung often appearing in current literature.Actually,it is the name of a Japanese plant wrongly applied by some authors. In 1896,Briquet took out section Schizonepeta from genus Nepeta and established it as an independent genus.One of his three species,Schizonepeta tenuifolia,is the plant that yields Tsing-chieh.Identical with this is Nepeta tenuifolia Benth.collected from Peking and Jehol in 1834. In all the pharmaceutical literature,the mother plant of Tsing-chieh was identified as Nepeta japonica Maxim.Butthisisa.Japanese plant closely related to Schizonepeta tenuifolia.Kitagawa considered it a variety of the Chinese species tenuifolia,hence the name Schizonepeta tenuifolia var.japonica (Maxim.) Kitagawa was suggested. Ishidoya reported in 1933,a drug named Tsing-chieh from Manchuria,and identified it as Nepeta lavandulacea L.f.(=Schizonepeta multifida Briq.).It is characterized by long and thick spikes and prominent shaggy hairs.However, investigations carried out by our pharmacognosists give no evidence of its practical usage.