Medicine and food homology

 

The poet Qu Yuan wrote an orange song: Midoriba Surong, it is a great joy. The mixture of green and yellow is bad. The essence is white. Citrus is a native plant in China. Its history can be traced back to the Neolithic Age four or five thousand years ago. Among the native fruits in China, citrus is regarded as "old qualifications". According to the classic Shang Shu Yu Gong, "... Jue Bao, orange and orange. Yugong records the deeds of the ancient Xia and Yu periods, indicating that oranges were one of the tributary objects to the rulers at least before the third century AD. Lu's spring and Autumn Annals record: "the beauty of fruit, the orange of Jiangpu, the pomelo of Yunmeng". When Qu Yuan recited the famous Ode to the Orange in the third century B.C., the citrus cultivation in China was quite developed and there were many producing areas. Sima Qian's historical records include "orange pomelo garden" and "Jiangling thousand tree oranges". "Museum of natural history" also noted: "orange pomelo" and so on. Orange seeds were found in ancient Han Tombs in Mawangdui, Changsha, and the words "bamboo" were found on bamboo slips. According to archaeologists, the word "orange" was "orange" in ancient times.

 

Many countries have mandarin oranges. According to textual research, the spread of Citrus in China began in the Han Dynasty. At first, oranges and sweet oranges were spread to India and Southeast Asia.  In the Tang Dynasty, it was introduced into Japan and Korea. It is said that when Japanese monks came to China for perfume, they brought back a fine variety from Huangyan, called "satsuma mandarin". Later, many Asian and African countries introduced this species. During the Song Dynasty, overseas trade expanded further, and China's oranges were exported to some countries. The Portuguese brought our sweet oranges to the Mediterranean coast, and so did Spain, Italy, France, Algeria, Egypt and Australia. Portuguese and Spanish have introduced sweet orange to Latin America. Citrus was introduced to Britain and the United States relatively late, in the early 19th century, they called Chinese citrus "Mandanin", meaning "Chinese rare orange".

 

A citrus family

 

Citrus is a large family, oranges, oranges, grapefruit, oranges, lemons are members of this family, so citrus in fruit tree generally refers to this kind of fruit. According to ancient documents, there were few varieties before the pre-Qin Dynasty, only citrus, pomelo and orange (lime orange) were recorded. After the Han Dynasty, varieties increased. The five collections of citrus and five species of citrus were recorded in the collection of herbs in the Tang Dynasty. Han Yan in the Southern Song Dynasty wrote a book named "Orange Record", the earliest orange monograph in China and the world. He recorded 27 citrus varieties in the book, including 5 oranges, 8 oranges and 14 oranges.

 

At present, more than 40 citrus species have been cultivated in China.  Oranges mainly include Zhejiang early orange, water orange, lactating orange, orange, warm orange, golden orange, spring orange; Hunan red orange, vermilion orange; Guangdong leaf orange; Sichuan red orange; Jiangxi Fengmi orange, Sanhu orange and Jiangsu early red orange, among which Zhejiang Huangyan honey orange and Jiangxi Fengmi orange are the best. The citrus species include Guangdong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi Sihui, Guangdong Xinhui, Sichuan, Hunan, Guangdong, Fujian and Sichuan gooseberry. Among them, Guangdong's banana and orange goose are the best. Sweet oranges include sweet oranges and perfume oranges from Guangdong, Huadan oranges and oranges from Guangxi, Jin oranges and blood oranges from Sichuan, etc. Among them, Guangdong's Xinhui orange and Chaozhou's sweet orange are the best. Shatian pomelo in Guangxi, Pingshan pomelo in Fujian, Wendan pomelo in Sichuan and Jiangjin sour pomelo in Sichuan, among which Shatian pomelo in Guangxi is famous at home and abroad. Citrus is an important variety of Citrus in the world. There are few cultivated varieties in China, mainly Taiwan lemons, Sichuan lemons and Guangdong lemons.

 

There is also an "orange trifoliate" in the citrus family, which is a variety of Citrus migrated to the North due to changes in environmental conditions. "Yanzi Spring and Autumn Annals" said: "oranges born in Huainan for oranges, born in Huaibei for oranges, foliage is similar, in fact different flavor. "Zhou Li Dong Guan Kao Gong Ji": "orange is over Huai and north is trifoliate orange". This place is very angry. " The flesh of trifoliate orange is sour and bitter, and can not be eaten, but it can be used as medicine. The name of Chinese medicine is "Fructus aurantii Immaturus" and "Fructus aurantii". It has the effects of strengthening stomach and removing stagnation and eliminating phlegm.

 

Citrus story

 

This idiom is related to citrus. Liu Ji of late Yuan and early Ming Dynasty wrote in "The Mandarin Seller's Word" that there was an orange seller in Hangzhou who was good at preserving the oranges in winter and summer. When they were sold, the orange skin was really "jade and golden" as it was when they were fresh, but when they were dissected, the orange flesh inside was "dry and rotten". Why do the citrus sellers deceive the world? The citrus seller said, "gold and jade are the most common among them." This is the author's satirize the society at the time by selling the citrus.

 

Ge Hong's "Biography of the Immortals" records: two thousand years ago when Emperor Wen of the Western Han Dynasty, Su Xiangong, a native of Guiyang, was proficient in medicine, but he practiced immortality. Before getting the right way to heaven, he said to his mother, "Next year, the world's disease, a liter of well water in the courtyard, an orange leaf under the eaves, can cure a person." In the following year, the plague was prevalent. His mother did what he said to cure the patients. Later, some traditional Chinese medicine shops hung the inscribed plate of "orange wellspring fragrance". A thousand years later, the Tang Dynasty Yuan Jie wrote a poem "Orange Well" to recall this: "Ling orange has no roots and springs, the world is like a dream for another thousand years, the countryside does not return to the crane, the surname is now the number of immortals? The wind and cold dew altar people quietly, leisurely and careless, the grass is full of Qian, how to til Su Jun trace, daytime nestle in heaven. These myths and legends are not valid.