How much do you know about Xiangyun yarn-Dioscorea cirrhosa?

Dioscorea cirrhosa is a medicinal material, which can promote blood circulation, replenish blood, and astringe astringency. When the ancients decocted medicine, they accidentally found that its juice could dye cloth. With continuous research and attempts, Dioscorea cirrhosa has gradually become a common ancient plant dyeing material.

Chinese name: Dioscorea cirrhosa

Again? Name: Mountain Pig Potato, Sheep Head, Ardisia crenata (Hunan), Rulang, Jinguoguo and Hong Haier.

Scientific name: Dioscorea cirrhosa.

Name of family and genus: Dioscorea of Dioscoreaceae

Plant morphology: it is a strong perennial vine; Tubers are various in shape, usually cylindrical or blocky, sometimes branched, with brown-black surface and red inside, and rust-colored after drying; There are curved thorns at the base of the stem, and the upward thorns are gradually sparse.

▲ yam rhizome

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Shen Kuo, a scientist in the Northern Song Dynasty, recorded in Meng Qian's Bi Tan: "The reference of herbal medicine (that is, Dioscorea cirrhosa) has not been examined in detail. Today, in the south of Ruokui, there are many ... juices are as red as ochre, and southerners make boots with dyed leather. "

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In the classic Chinese medicine "New Materia Medica" edited by Su Jing and others in the Tang Dynasty, some people recorded Dioscorea cirrhosa: "The tuber of Dioscorea cirrhosa, often called" ochre sunflower ",varies in size, with the big one as a bucket and the small one as a rising one, generally crawling on other trees."

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In the Qing Dynasty, Li's "Notes on South Vietnam" said: "Dioscorea cirrhosa is good in Jiangbei. White is useless, it must be red. Red people are sticky, and fishermen use them to dye melons. Taros are crisp, water-loving, salt-tolerant and not easy to rot. "

Dioscorea cirrhosa tuber mainly contains condensed tannins and glycosides. Phenolic glycosides and tannins, L- epicatechin and its dimer, trimer and tetramer have been separated, and they also contain a lot of sugar, starch and vitamin C.

Taking medicine can promote blood circulation, replenish blood, astringe and astringe, and treat traumatic injury, blood stasis and qi stagnation, irregular menstruation, metrorrhagia, hemoptysis, hemiplegia and rheumatism.

Dioscorea cirrhosa tuber is rich in tannin, which can be extracted from tannin extract and used for dyeing silk, cotton cloth and fishing nets. It can also be used as raw material for brewing wine. Dioscorea cirrhosa as a plant dye has a history of 1000 years.

According to ancient books such as Guangdong Textile Industry, during Yongle period of Ming Dynasty (1403 ~ 1424), Guangdong used Dioscorea cirrhosa to dye silk fabrics and dried them.

Fishermen in the Pearl River Delta soak their fishing nets with Dioscorea cirrhosa to make them strong and durable, and their clothes are also stained with Dioscorea cirrhosa juice when they soak their fishing nets. With the passage of time, the clothes of fishermen and the river mud in their working environment have changed. Fishermen feel that clothes soaked in yam juice are as strong as fishing nets, and then polluted with river mud, making them black, soft and durable. So fishermen began to soak their daily clothes when they were soaking their fishing nets.

At that time, there were mulberry fish ponds everywhere in the Pearl River Delta, and people lived a life of men plowing and women weaving. Silk fabrics are prone to yellowing, wrinkling and wear due to their long service life. Farmers who are gradually producing silk use this method of fishermen's soaking cloth to soak silk fabrics. Cool and pleasant, easy to wash and dry, dark and stain-resistant, non-touching, light and not easy to wrinkle, soft and bony, especially favored by fishermen in coastal areas. This is the predecessor of the famous Guangdong specialty Ranunculus ternatus.

▲ Mashed yam rhizome

As an indispensable and important raw material for making Xiangyun yarn, the rhizome of Dioscorea cirrhosa can be ground and added with water to obtain a reddish liquid, which contains tannin. It feels sticky to touch these yam juice with your hands.

▲ yam juice

Workers pour yam juice into the sink, put the gauze blank into yam syrup, press the whole cloth into the juice by hand, pat and fondle it so that every square inch of the cloth is stained with yam juice, then pick it up, hang it aside, naturally dehydrate it, and drag it to the sun for exposure.

The blank silk is dipped and dyed into brown semi-finished products for many times, and then one side is coated with black pond mud rich in iron and exposed to the scorching sun.

▲ Soil covering and daubing on rivers.

▲ Muddy Xiangyun yarn needs to be washed in the river.

Biochemical components such as iron ions in the mud fully react with tannins in Dioscorea cirrhosa juice to generate black ferrous tannins, and then the pond mud is shaken off, and then the yarn is cleaned, thus forming Xiangyun yarn with black face and yellow inside and shiny oil. The black component is ferrous tannic acid, and the brown component is tannic acid oxidized and denatured by tannins in Dioscorea cirrhosa.

▲ Soak yam juice, smear it with river mud, clean it and dry it.

Xiangyun yarn has changed color.

Dioscorea cirrhosa is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has the effects of clearing away heat and removing blood stasis, and also has the functions of mildew prevention, sterilization and deodorization, so people in the industry generally believe that clothes made of Xiangyun yarn have similar "medical" effects.

▲ Yam slices are very similar to braised beef.

We often see Xiangyun yarn in movies and novels.

In The Story of Yan Xi Palace, the elegance of "Mo Landi color system", the exquisite makeup of clothes and the exquisite workmanship of ornaments are widely praised, but few people know that this exquisiteness is carried by Xiangyun yarn.

▲ "The Story of Yan Xi Palace" stills

Gu, played by Zhou Xun in the wind, dressed in a cheongsam with dark flowers, gold thread and fragrant yarn, is beautiful, delicate and free and easy, but she is desperate for the country's righteousness in this storm.

▲ "Wind" stills

Zhang Ailing wrote in "Fragments of Aquilaria Resinatum: The First Furnace Incense": "The man's back can be seen clearly in the moonlight, wearing a white grass shirt and black incense, and his feet and pants are very big. Because of the hot weather, I put a snake-like braid on my head, revealing a pink neck outside my collar. " She likes cheongsam made of Xiangyun yarn, so the characters in the work naturally like it.

▲ Zhang Ailing's old photos

Soong Ching Ling is a fan of Xiangyun cheongsam. She has a favorite Xiangyun cheongsam: stand-up collar, short sleeves, right back, black, hand-stitched. In her later years, Soong Ching Ling even enlarged the sides of her favorite Xiangyun cheongsam and continued to wear it because she was getting fatter and fatter.

▲ Now it is collected in the former residence of Shanghai Soong Ching Ling.

Writer Bing Xin wrote in "To a Little Reader", "Her mother is wearing a blue gauze and is about fifty years old, with a sad face. Talking to her is like loving and scolding. "

▲ Bing Xin's old photo

I have to sigh the wisdom of the ancients. Xiangyun yarn contains 18 amino acids needed by human body. The fiber is slender and smooth, light and soft, and has good hygroscopicity and breathability. It has elegant pearl-like light, which can protect the elasticity of blood vessels under the skin and delay skin aging. At the same time, it has a variety of natural ecological health care functions: effective burn prevention, allergy prevention, mildew prevention, sterilization, deodorization, ultraviolet protection, insect prevention and moth prevention. ...

Xiangyun yarn has a soft, smooth and tough structure, which is very durable. It does not need soap to wash, dries in the air, and does not need scalding. It is light and cool, as thin as cicada's wings, pleasant and cool, beautiful and elegant, gorgeous and pure, easy to wash and dry, warm in winter and cool in summer, good in heat dissipation and warmth, low-key and luxurious, and has always been a symbol of high-end clothing.