Many children ask me what is wattle honey. I said it was a flower honey whose honey source was wattle.
What is Thorn Bar? Let's start with Jing.
Jing Chu
Jing is also called Chu, that is, the appearance of bushes. Jing, originally meant a shrub in the field that is easy to stab people, hence the word "pain". There are many areas around Hubei, so it is called Jingchu.
Thorns are often used in conjunction with thorns as thorns. Later, thorns specifically refer to the branches with thorns, and those without thorns are called thorns. The sin of the incorruptible thorn is this thornless thorn.
It also matches the cloth skirt. Those who like Kunqu opera are familiar with the southern drama of "Jingchao", and the hairpin on the heroine's head is made of thorns, which shows how simple it is. The wife modestly calls it "Humble Thorn", which is derived from this.
Jing or Chu, are common names, the main representative is the Oyster.
Vitex Verbena family A variant of the genus Vitex is a deciduous shrub or small tree. The yellow wattle is the original variant in China, but the mutant vitex occupies the upper position.
Vitex is also a native plant of Nanjing. There is a century-old oyster tree on the campus of NanshiFu High School, accompanied by a bronze bust of Mr. Ba Jin.
There are several varieties of wattle, often mixed together, mainly distinguished by leaves. They are palmate compound leaves, the full edge of the leaf is smooth yellow wattle, the leaf margin is serrated for the vitex, and most of them are distributed in the south.
There is also a variant with a distribution in the north and south, the official name is called Jingtiao. In ancient poems, the "three thorns" are often used as a metaphor for brothers. Other small-leaved yellow wattle, white-haired yellow wattle, Guangdong yellow wattle and other varieties are not widely distributed.
Jing is famous
Although there are different varieties of yellow wattle, it is often used as the same thing in the folk. Aliases are also common, such as yellow wattle, wattle tree, five-fingered orange, noon grass, spread incense and so on. There are many growing trees on the mountain, which is the most common fuelwood, so it is also called Huangjing Chai, Yanggong Chai and so on. In the early years, there were no mosquito repellent products such as mosquito coils, and people also burned thorn branches and leaves to repel mosquitoes with smoke, so it was also called mosquito vanilla. If you take the appearance of the genus, the vitex can still serve the people.
Oyster, the meaning of male. The ancients called the childless of the thorn a thorn a thorn. In fact, the vitex is the result, and it is estimated that the reason may be that the vitex often reproduces asexually in the form of cuttings. The vitex flowers in lilac from June to July and bears small black fruits from August to November.
Wattle trees are mostly used for slope fixing and soil and water conservation, as well as for ornamental greening and making bonsai. There is also a kind of spike flower vitex from Europe, which has a large amount of flowers and is a green ornamental variety.
The ancients' methods of plant classification were rough, and some were classified as "thorns" only by the softness of the branches. For example, the red wattle of the Tamarix family and the redbud of the legume family.
In the fold of "Peach Blossom Fan But", there is "take off the skirt, the poor may as well be poor; the cloth jingren, the name is self-incense." " sentence. The cloth in the song means poor woman. But bujing is also a mountain thorn that the Hakka people regard as a sacred tree. The reason why it is called a sacred tree is that the villagers mistakenly believe that it is a thorn that has become a fine one, and can grow into a towering tree that is more than 20 meters high. The real Vitex (Yellow Wattle) will never grow up, and the ancients clouded its "thousand-year-old sawn board, ten thousand years can not build a bridge."
What can that vitex do?
Jing out of talent
The ancients often used the stalk of the thorn for the use of the staff of punishment, which was a symbol of punishment. "Jing" and "punishment" may not have anything to do with each other, but they are a powerful tool for family discipline anyway. Lian Po is so old, he still does not forget to bring this common torture device, and expresses his willingness to accept Lin Xiang's paternalistic punishment. It is said that Su Dongpo and Su Che often learned from Jingtiao when they were young, so it is said that "talents are produced under Jingtiao".
No one has ever seen those stories. Ha ha...... I remembered a rural phrase after a break: "Eat thorns and pull dung baskets, I really can make it up!" "Because the thorns are usually used to weave baskets and baskets." The peeled stems of wattles are also useful for making paper or artificial cotton.
Its root system is staggered, commonly used for modeling, and the digging on Mount Tai is called "thorn knots".
In many places, the Hakka people make alkali (枧) water dumplings, which like to be made with lye water made from the ash of the leaves of the vitex.
The leaves of Vitex are fragrant. Hunan people make tempeh, often spreading cooked soybeans on the leaves of vitex to ferment and dry, bringing in the unique aroma of tempeh.
Some areas also make emerald tofu (also called fairy grass tofu, spotted dove cold powder), and use vitex leaves instead of the same family of plants (commonly known as tofu chai). Vitex leaves contain less pectin than rotten tofu, and the green tofu is relatively tender.
Nowadays, there are also people who collect fresh vitex seedlings, blanch them in boiling water and then mix them cold or stuff them into the stuffing to make buns, called yellow wattles. The vitex leaves themselves are fragrant, but many seasonings are omitted.
Thorns out of the aroma
The aroma of Vitex leaves comes from the volatile oil components contained therein and can be extracted by distillation by water vapor. Vitex oil has a sweet, long-lasting woody aroma and is suitable for blending soaps, cosmetics and tobacco flavors.
The main ingredient in Vitex oil is β-syringene (more than 20%), as well as some other monoterpenoids. It has expectorant, cough and asthmatic effects. The 2015 edition of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia includes Vitex leaves, as well as Vitex oil and Vitex oil gum pills for the treatment of chronic bronchitis.
The water-soluble ingredient of Vitex also contains Vitex, an active ingredient of flavonoid glycosides. It has shown good pharmacological effects against myocardial ischemia, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, anti-tumor and other aspects. Vitex is widely distributed in dozens of plant species in nature. There is a lack of large-scale cultivation of vitex, and industrially vitex is mainly produced from hawthorn leaves.
In addition, the spike flower Agnus Castus, introduced as an ornamental plant, is called chastityberry in Europe. Ancient Europeans believed that its fruit could suppress sexual desire, and husbands traveled for many years to fight and let the wives who stayed alone eat it, hence the name. At present, the extract of Vitex is used for reproductive diseases in women caused by hyperprolactinemia and lutein deficiency. However, there is no definitive clinical evidence of these effects.
Nectar from thorns
Back to the beginning of the thorn honey, or thorn nectar. It belongs to the summer and autumn honey, is one of the most stable harvest of honey in China's bulk honey source every year, together with jujube nectar, locust nectar, lychee honey and called China's four famous honeys. Wattle honey is a general term, honey source from different varieties such as yellow wattle, vitex and wattle, light amber, fragrant smell, sweet and slightly sour. Because the glucose contained is slightly higher than the fructose, it is easy to crystallize into a delicate milky white paste.
Most of the manufacturers buy immature honey that is shaken out once every two or three days, which is only about 36 ° Bé, and is heated and concentrated after collection and then sold. Supermarkets sell this honey. The beekeeper keeps the ripe cover honey that is shaken once every seven or eight days. Although the yield is low, it has a concentration of 42 °Bé, is fragrant and retains enzyme nutrients.
The honey sold online, just claiming to be real honey is far from enough, but also to ensure that it is "cover honey" is a naturally mature good honey.
The above pictures do not indicate the source, generally from the Internet