Characteristics of Eucommia

Deciduous tree, up to 20 meters high. Branchlets smooth, yellow-brown or lighter, with lamellar pith.

The bark, branches and leaves contain gum.

Simple leaves alternate; elliptic or ovate, 7-15 centimeters long, 3.5-6.5 centimeters wide, apex acuminate, base broadly cuneate, margin serrate, young leaves sparsely pilose above, densely hairy below, older leaves smooth above, sparsely hairy at the veins below; petiole 1-2 centimeters long. Flowers unisexual, dioecious, open at the same time as the leaves, or first leaves, born in the axil of the bracts at the base of annual branches, stalked; no perianth; male flowers have 6-10 stamens; female flowers have a naked and prolonged ovary, 1-loculed ovary, with 2 forked styles at the tip.

The samara is ovate-oblong ellipsoid and compressed, the apex depressed, containing 1 seed. Flowering April to May. Fruiting period September.

Uses of Eucommia

Shade trees, Eucommia trees have straight trunks, dense foliage and branches, beautiful tree shape, and obvious changes in seasonal landscapes, which make it an ideal shade tree.

Garden ornamental trees, suitable for solitary planting or free clump planting in the green space, sunny slopes, waterfront, roadside, in front of the building as a garden ornamental trees, used in many landscape projects.

Street trees, Eucalyptus, with its beautiful shape, is suitable to be used as street trees in urban greening, and can also be used as highway greening trees.

Square tree, can be planted into a tree array form, under the pavement and seats, thus constituting a square hard pavement and park green space transition, not only to increase the green shade, but also to add the experience of the plaza open space, especially suitable for cultural plazas and civic plazas.

Economic tree species, Duchess tree material is excellent, leaves and bark can be used as medicine, is an important economic forest species.

Identification of the medicinal herbs of eucommia

A: dry bark, flat plate or rolled sheet, size and thickness vary, generally about 3 to 10 mm thick, about 40 to 100 cm long. Microscopic identification: old bark cross-section: thicker layer of fallen bark. There are about 5-6 intermittent stone cell layers in the phloem, each layer is about 3 cells thick, and the stone cell wall is very thick; the rays are 2-3 cells wide; there are irregularly shaped `rubber mass dispersed, which is more common near the stone cell layer. In longitudinal section the rubbery mass is present in the rubber cells. Powder: dark grayish brown.

① stone cell class rectangular, square-like, rounded, polygonal or irregular, diameter 32-80 μm, long as 180 μm, wall thickness 6-28 μm, mostly uneven thickness, pore grooves are obvious, and some cavities contain rubbery masses.

② Rubber filaments are long and thin, slightly curved or twisted into clusters, with a granular surface.

③ cork cells surface view polygonal, uneven wall thickening, lignification, fine pores, the cell cavity often contains orange-red material; cross-section view slightly rectangular, thin wall on one side, the other side of the thick, pore grooves obvious. Another visible sieve tube molecules, starch granules.

Second: the bark contains eucommia gum (Gutta-percha) 6 to 10%, the fatty acid composition of the fatty oil contained in the seeds is 67.38% linolenic acid, linoleic acid 9.97%, oleic acid 15 stearic acid 2 fruits contain gum up to 27%, easily soluble in organic solvents such as ethanol, acetone. Eucommia bark and leaves contain 14 kinds of lignin and lignin glycosides (ligninoglycosides), and glycosides linked to the sugar are glucopyranose. Among them, diphenyltetrahydrofuran lignin and its glycosides are pinoresinol diglycoside, etc. Pinoresinol diglycoside is the active ingredient for lowering blood pressure in Eucommia. From the skin of eucommia, it also contains n-twenty-nine alkanes, n-thirtiethyl alcohol, betulin, betulin, betulinic acid, β-sitosterol, ursolic acid and vanillic acid. Eucommia bark and leaves also contain 17 kinds of free amino acids and 15 kinds of trace elements such as germanium and selenium. It also contains cyclic enol ether terpenes, 10 kinds of cyclic enol ether terpenes (iridoids) from the skin and leaves of Eucommia bark and leaves, including geniposide (geniposide), aucubin (aucubin), ajugoside (ajugoside), ulmoside (ulmoside), harpagide acetate (harpagide), and glucoside (aucubin). Glucoside (reptoside), etc., in addition to eucommia glucoside, the rest of the components of the glucoside element are β-glucoside chain linked to glucopyranose. Duchess glucosides sugar part for isomaltose (isomaltose-glucose-α-glucoside).

Collection in order to protect the resources, generally use partial peeling method. In the Qingming to the summer solstice, select the growth of more than 15 to 20 years of plants, according to the size of the specification of the herb, peel off the bark, shaved off the rough skin, sun dry. The first thing you need to do is to get rid of it.

The dried bark of the herbs, for the flat plate sheet or rolled sheet, the size of the thickness varies, generally about 3 to 10 mm thick, about 40 to 100 cm long. The outer surface is gray-brown, rough, with irregular longitudinal grooves and rhomboid transverse split lenticels, sometimes visible grayish lichen spots. But commodities have been cut off part of the rough skin, so the outer surface is light brown, smoother. The inner surface is smooth, dark purple. The texture is brittle and easy to break, and there are silver-white filaments connected with the cross-section, fine and dense, slightly stretchy. Slight gas, slightly bitter flavor, chewing gelatinous residue. To skin thick and large, brown skin scraping, outside yellow-brown, inside black-brown and light, when broken white silk is good. Thin skin, less silk on the cross-section or thick skin with thick skin quality second.

Chemical composition of the bark contains 6-10% of dulcium gum, the root bark contains about 10-12%, is soluble in ethanol, insoluble in water hard gum. In addition, it also contains glycosides 0.142 mg%, alkaloids 0.066 mg%, pectin 6.5 mg%, fat 2.9 mg%, resin 1.76 mg%, organic acids 0.25 mg%, ketoses (2.15 mg% before hydrolysis, 3.5 mg% after hydrolysis), vitamin C 20.7 mg%, aldoses, chlorogenic acid.