These two days, I chatted with a friend in Shaanxi and heard him talk about digging a kind of mountain goods in the mountains recently.
I asked what kind of mountain goods it was, and he sent me several photos. I looked at it, isn't this a potato? And some of them are sun-dried like dried sweet potatoes.
But when I told him the answer, this friend smiled so hard that his mouth could not be closed, this is not a potato, the price is dozens of times more expensive than it, and a pound will sell for hundreds of yuan.
Later, my friend told me that this was a wild gastrodia that he had dug up in the mountains, a rootless and leafless plant that could not photosynthesize, but the largest could grow to 2 pounds. And this year, the biggest one he dug up was more than one pound, which can be called the "Tianma King".
Without roots and leaves, and without photosynthesis, how can hemp grow to two pounds that day? It aroused my interest at once, and I inevitably had a discussion with this friend.
And later also checked a lot of information to know, the original Tianma also has a lot of cold knowledge, today and everyone to share it.
Speaking of tianma, although many people do not know it, nor have they seen it, but there are many people who know it, after all, it is a very valuable medicinal material in China, and the history of using it into medicine is very long, so far it has a history of nearly two thousand years.
The earliest record of tianma can be traced back to the Shennong Materia Medica, and it is recorded in many ancient medical texts, it is a medicinal material with high medicinal value and highly respected by doctors. Li Shizhen even recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" that it has the purpose of "eliminating hundreds of diseases and prolonging life".
However, in the eyes of many people, they all think that gastrodia is a kind of photosynthesis like other plants, but in fact this is not the case.
Gastrodia was also called "fairy foot" in ancient times, because ancient folklore believed that it was a plant that fell from the sky, not an ordinary thing. Just as "ginseng" can run, there are many folk legends about this medicinal herb.
In some places, it is also rumored that tianma comes from heaven, and it looks like the feet of immortals. Because he cares for the world, and also marries and has children, he is unwilling to return to heaven, so the people also call it "stick can not retreat", which is why some places call tianma "fairy feet" and "sticks can not be retreated".
And the reason why the ancients will think that gastrodia is not a human thing, it is because this plant is very special, it not only has no roots, but also has no leaves, that is, a bulb like a potato in the ground, and then grows a slender stem, which can reach more than 2 meters high, and will flower and bear fruit, that is, there are no leaves.
Later studies found that gastrodia is not only rootless but also leafless, and cannot be photosynthesized. So, how does gastropoda absorb nutrients and water?
This is because gastrodia is a saprophytic herb that grows and reproduces by a supply of nutrients called honey ring fungus.
This is similar to the characteristics of some parasitic plants, although gastrodia can not perform photosynthesis, but because honey ring bacteria are like nutrient supply stations, a continuous supply of nutrients. In addition, it is a perennial plant, and if it is old, it can also grow to a pound or two.
If you look closely at the newly mined gastrodia, you will find that there are many small spots on the surface of the water, which are not its roots and whiskers, but the hyphae of honey ring fungus.
Ten years ago, tianma has always been a relatively rare and expensive medicinal material, and later it has become a kind of unattainable "miracle medicine" because of the hype of some merchants, and when it is most expensive, a pound will sell for more than 1,000 yuan, and it is still in short supply at that time.
The reason is because in the past, it was basically based on wild gastrodia, and few people planted it. However, the wild gastropoda is limited in number and the yield is unstable. The market demand is large, and the price of short supply and demand has begun to rise sharply.
When the "sky-high price" of gastrodia appeared, some people began to study how to grow gastrodia. In the past, the technology was immature, and the success rate of artificial cultivation of gastrodia was extremely low. Because this plant is dependent on honey ring bacteria to supply nutrients to grow and reproduce.
Therefore, the first step in planting gastrodia is to cultivate a certain amount of high-quality honey ring fungus, and the second step is to introduce gastrodia seeds. And timely planting with honey ring fungus. However, in the past, the technology of cultivating honey ring bacteria was not mature, and it was not until later that there was a huge breakthrough, so many places began to cultivate gastrodia.
The biggest advantage of artificial cultivation of tianma is that not only the yield is higher, but it is also convenient to dig, just like digging potatoes, digging from this piece of land to another piece. At that time, it was said that the output value of one mu of land could reach 60,000 or 70,000, and many people tried to plant.
But it is also because a large number of farmers grow gastrodia, its price has begun to fall. Especially after the improved gastrodia quality, the yield is higher, the growth cycle is shorter, but the effect is far less than before.
Just as the so-called "penny for a penny", the medicinal effect is far less than before, and the price of gastrodia has begun to fall. Many farmers have not even earned back the cost of planting tianma, so the result is that they have abandoned the seeds.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with Tianma, and its value is beyond doubt, otherwise it would not have had such a high reputation in history. It's just that this kind of thing has a lot to do with its growth environment, growth age, etc. The effect of gastrodia growing in different environments is also very different.
Now wild gastrodia has rarely been seen, listen to my friend said, used to be lucky to dig dozens of a day, and now a few days to dig up three or four, and this is still good luck. If you're unlucky, you may not be able to find it in a month.
Dear netizens and friends, do you have Tianma in your local area? Have you ever dug up gastrodia in the wild? Welcome to leave a message to discuss! (The image is from the Internet, the infringement can be deleted)