In the south of China, there is a plant called five-fingered peach in Liangguang, Yungui and other places, which people usually use its root to cook soup and have medicinal value. Today I will talk about some of the situations of this plant.
Botanical characteristics of the one and five fingered peaches
1. Name and classification status
Five-fingered peach is an alias, because its leaves are palm-shaped 3-5 deeply lobed, looking like five fingers, the fruit is like a peach, so the name of the five-fingered peach; its official name is coarse-leaved fig, this name comes from the "Chinese Higher Plants Illustrated Book"; the scientific name is Ficus hirta Vahl.; many aliases, recorded in the "Botanical Names and Facts" as The small maple tree and the big green leaf; recorded in the "Hainan Botanical Chronicle" as the Buddha palm fig; recorded in the "Chinese Higher Plant Atlas" as the palm leaf fig; aliases also cat egg fruit, horse grass fruit In plant taxonomy, it belongs to the genus Ficus of the family Mulberry.
2, distribution and growth environment
It is mainly distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hainan, Hunan, Fujian, Jiangxi and other provinces and regions in China; it usually grows near villages, hillside forests or epiphytes on other trunks.
3, appearance characteristics
One is a shrub or small tree with hollow young branches and golden hard hairs on the branches, leaves and fruits.
The second is that the leaf shape changes greatly, the leaves on the same tree have full margins and splits, the leaves are alternate, papery, long oval lanceolate or wide ovate, the leaf edges have fine serrations, full margins or 3-5 deep lobes, there are rough hairs on both sides, and the petiole is 2-8 cm long.
The third is that the fig fruit is axillary or born on the deciduous branches, spherical, about 1 cm in diameter, the female flower and fruit spherical, the male flower and the gall flower fruit ovate; the male flower grows in the inner wall of the fig fruit near the mouth, the flower is 4, red, 2-3 stamens; the flower cover of the gall flower is the same as the female flower; the female flower grows in the female plant fig fruit, and the flower is 4 indumentum.
The main use of two and five finger peaches
First, eat. In Guangdong and other places, the root soup of the five-fingered peach is commonly used, often referred to as "Guangdong ginseng";
In recent years, people have developed a variety of foods such as five-finger peach wine, five-finger peach drink, five-finger peach fragrant chicken, five-finger peach soup, five-finger peach jelly and so on.
Second, medicinal uses. The root medicinal uses of the five-fingered peach were first recorded in the Qing Dynasty's "Raw Herbal Preparations", followed by "Botanical Names and Facts", "Lingnan Medicine Collection", etc.; its sweet taste, spicy, fragrant, flat, with a healthy spleen tonic lungs, qi and dampness, soothing and stimulating the network; mainly contains flavonoids, coumarins, terpenes, calcium, magnesium, zinc, manganese, iron, copper and other active ingredients. Please follow your doctor's advice when using medicines.
Third, its stem skin fibers are developed, and it can be used to make ropes, sacks, etc.