Agarwood has a knot incense, in everyone's heart, agarwood is a knot incense, in fact, it is not, there is a plant also called knot incense. What is incense? What does it look like? Today we will take a look at the mysterious knot incense.
The incense is also called Huang Ruixiang, knotted flowers, dream flowers, and the family is Ruixiang family, knotted incense genus. It can be cultivated in all parts of the Yangtze River Basin in China, Henan, Shaanxi, South China and Southwest China. It is a deciduous shrub that can reach a height of up to 2 meters. The young branches are long with silky soft hairs, thick and flexible branches, and the branches are brownish red, usually in the form of 3-pronged branches with skin holes.
The leaves are papery, alternate, often clustered at the top of branches; the leaves are oval oblong or oval lanceolate, about 6 to 20 cm long and between 2.5 and 5.5 cm wide, full margin, short apex, basal wedge-shaped; sparsely hairy on the front of the leaf, pinkish white on the reverse with long hard hairs; the upper veins and axillary veins of the leaves are densely packed; the petiole is short.
The inflorescence is a flowering plant, apical or lateral, with 30 to 50 flowers in the form of a velvet ball, and about 10 general buds that have fallen early due to long hairs on the periphery; the inflorescence stem has long gray-white hard hairs; the flowers are yellow, fragrant, the calyx is 1.3 to 2 cm long and about 4 to 5 mm wide, densely covered with white filamentous hairs on the outside, and the inner surface is hairless, and there are 4 oval lobes at the apex; the 4 stamens in the upper column are opposite to the calyx lobes, and the following 4 are interacted with the calyx lobes, the filaments are short, and the anthers are ovate. The flowering period of incense is earlier, in late winter and early spring, and the fruit stage is in spring and summer.
The incense has the biggest characteristic of the Ruixiang family: its flowers look like petals, but they are actually flower figures, which are called "flower figures usually corolla" in botany. So there are no real petals for incense! The structure of the fragrant flowers is: there are thin tubular flowers, outer cloth fluff, 4 shallow lobes at the apex, the inner surface of the lobes is golden yellow, 2 wide and 2 narrow; in the center of each flower, there are 4 golden stamens, 4 stamens hidden below.
Knotted incense is also known as knotted flowers, but the knots on its branches are not naturally grown, but artificial knots. The name of the incense is because its branches are soft, can be knotted arbitrarily without breaking the branches, and the flowers have a strong fragrance.
Fragrant flowers contain volatile oils, the main components are γ-terpeneene, benzyl acetate, β-phenylethyl acetate, methyl salicylate and so on. Flowers can be extracted for the spice profession, stems and leaves can be boiled, and fruits can kill insects. The whole plant can be medicated, which has the effect of relieving muscles and activating the network, anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving, and can be used to treat bruises and rheumatic pain. Fragrant stem bark fiber is also a raw material for high-grade paper and artificial cotton.
Do you know anything about incense?