How many poisonous weeds are there?

Most people have two major sources of impression of poisonous weeds-one is herbal medicine. The ancients said: "Shennong tastes all kinds of herbs, 70 poisons a day." A hundred herbs are used in medicine, and their nature is poisonous, so Chinese herbal medicine is divided into middle and low grade, and most of them are non-toxic and high-grade, so that the folk spread the saying that "it is one-third poison of medicine". Another impression about poisonous weeds comes from martial arts novels or TV dramas. Jin Yong mentioned heartbroken grass, love flowers, seven-heart begonia and so on, all very popular for a time, household name. However, the legends about the medicinal mechanism and anecdotes of poisonous weeds are in fact broad and profound knowledge, involving biology, environment, history, literature, and so on.

Rhizoma Gelsemium

Hook kiss

Gelsemium is a kind of vine with opposite leaves, because its flowers, leaves and vines are somewhat similar to honeysuckle (that is, heat-clearing herbal medicine honeysuckle), there has been an incident of picking it as honeysuckle to soak in water. One asks for his life to seize the soul, the other is cool to stop the fire, and the water soaked in the broken grass is naturally far away from the honeysuckle.

There was a legend that Shennong died of the poison of heartbroken grass.

It is said in Huai Nan Zi that Shennong tasted all kinds of herbs in one day and encountered 70 poisons in one day. Luo Pei of the Song Dynasty said in the History of the Road that Shennong died in today's Yanling in Hubei Province. Even if Shennong really lived for more than 100 years and encountered 70 kinds of poisons in one day, he was not poisoned, but he suddenly died during his tour to the south. It can be seen that he encountered highly poisonous plants in the south that he did not know and could not detoxify. This reminds later generations of the broken intestine grass recorded in the Classic of Shennong Materia Medica, an evergreen vine, which is distributed all over the south of our country. Its main toxic substance is Gelsemium, which can poison a person as long as a few grams. So in 1979, someone in Folk Literature made up such a play: one day Shennong found a plant with small yellow flowers and picked it to taste it, but after tasting it, he died before taking the antidote. As a result, in recent years, some people have dug up the dusty old stories and inferred the exact cause of death of the characters in ancient legends.

There seems to be no solid evidence for the legend of Shennong, but Song ci, the criminal officer of the Great Song Dynasty, is a real person. Song ci wrote a section entitled "taking poison" in the Collection of grievances, which specifically records the rescue method for those who take poison and heartbroken herbs-giving him feces to urge him to vomit and lavage his stomach. The broken-gut grass mentioned here is generally regarded as the "hook kiss", which belongs to the family Brucaceae. The source of the hook kiss is that the "entrance is the hook man's throat kiss", which is extremely severe.

There is still a saying in ancient times: the hook kiss is similar to the leaves of Polygonatum. "Huang Zhi and Hook Kiss are the opposite of each other. If you send a message to a man in the path, keep a high eye on it when you pick it. " Huangzhi, a plant of the Liliaceae, is the immortal medicine taken by ancient Taoism, often mentioned side by side with hook and kiss, as a typical example of both pros and cons, such as the five clouds in the Museum Records of Zhang Hua in the Western Jin Dynasty: "the Yellow Emperor asked the old man: heaven and earth is born, is there food so that people do not die?" Tian Lao said: the grass of the sun is called Huang Jing. If you eat it with bait, you can live forever. The grass of Taiyin is called Hook Kiss, which is inedible, and the entrance stands dead. "

As for the origin of this deadly poisonous weed and writers, the first person to trace back is the poem fairy Li Taibai-Li Bai said in the poem "my concubine's bad fate": "it used to be hibiscus flowers, but now it's heartbroken grass." When the people of Ruoqing compiled the Collection of Li Taibai, they thought that the word "broken grass" was wrong, so it was changed to "broken grass", so the previous version was no longer popular. The ancients compared hibiscus flower with heartbroken grass, and even thought that they had a deep origin with each other for a long time.

As for the extreme popularity of broken-hearted grass in literary works, it should also be regarded as the romantic story in Jin Yong's novel "Divine carving and chivalrous Men". In the valley of despair, Yang Guo saw the love flower and said, "it tastes very sweet, but then it is bitter." Is this flower called love flower? It's a chic name. " He reached out and picked flowers again, even though he was reminded, "look out!" There are thorns in the tree! " Yang Guo was still stabbed by the hidden little finger behind the flower, and was poisoned by the love flower after all. In the novel, the love flowers are described as follows: "if you take a closer look at the flowers and trees, you can see that the branches and leaves are covered with small thorns, but the petals are delicate and beautiful, like hibiscus and more fragrant, such as camellia." This highly poisonous love flower like hibiscus is immediately reminiscent of the synonymous hibiscus and heartbroken grass in Li Bai's poems. Mr. Jin Yong is a deceitful and treacherous novelist. In his novel, he writes a plant that looks like a synonym into a companion plant that attacks poison with poison. Yang Guo is in great pain because he is poisoned by love flowers. Fortunately, the heartbroken grass near the love garden saved him.

In the writings of Mr. Jin Yong, heartbroken grass can cure the poison of love flowers. This love flower, like hibiscus, such as heartbroken grass, this flower may be as Li Bai said, sometimes hibiscus flowers, sometimes poisonous weeds. As a result, "Divine carving and chivalrous Men" explicitly said that poison could be used to combat poison, and the dark metaphor could cure the emotion, so many readers were excited and grateful, because the love was so poisonous that it was difficult-- and Yang Guo finally burned the love flower in the novel, and there was no such poison in the world from now on, only the broken-hearted grass widowed and widowed, and it was difficult to find an object of detoxification.

Sheep hesitate to boil away

Rhododendron

Rhododendron is a kind of real rhododendron, although the color is not the traditional pink system, but it is worth watching. Unfortunately, flowers are often poisonous, and so is rhododendron. In fact, most rhododendrons are poisonous. People and animals overeat and are often poisoned. Even the plants under the rhododendron forest will be affected by their toxicity, and only some special species can survive.

It is said that there was a unique cuckoo drunken fish in Bita Sea in Shangri-La, Yunnan Province. Every May when the azaleas are in full bloom, the rhododendron petals on the banks of the Bita Sea fall into the water one after another, attracting swimming fish. after swallowing the petals, the fish get drunk and float on the surface of the water, thus forming a strange landscape of the lake. Such a landscape has now disappeared, making people fascinated, making people wonder whether Bitahai is really a poisonous lake in the Tibetan legend "the Legend of King Gesar".

Although the poisonous lake has nothing to rely on, the poison of azaleas is true. Among many kinds of azaleas, sheep hesitation is especially toxic: Shennong Materia Medica in the Eastern Han Dynasty listed 21 kinds of poisonous plants, including Gelsemium, Chenopodium, aconitum, sheep, etc., especially hesitating to list sheep as toxic inferior drugs. The Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty said that "flowers, roots and leaves are poisonous, and sheep hesitate to die if they eat their leaves." It is worth mentioning that although the most poisonous parts of the whole plant are flowers and fruits, poisoning incidents such as goats and sheep often occur when young leaves sprout in early spring and animals are hungry for food. So sheep hesitate to poison people and livestock, not by virtue of treacherous yellow flowers.

The most important feature of sheep hesitation toxin is that it makes people and animals numb, stumble and lose consciousness, like drunkenness, and the toxin seems to be more toxic when combined with alcohol. According to the book "poisonous plants in China", "this flower is one of the components of Mongolian sweat medicine handed down through the ages; it is said that taking this flower with wine can make people numb and lose consciousness." This is consistent with the record of Mei Yuanshi's "Medicinal Huiyuan" at the end of the Ming Dynasty: "the rhododendron flower is unconvincing, but the mistake makes people tremble and faint for a day." If used, it can be mixed with soju and steamed three times, and there is no problem. It combines with Tara flower (that is, mandala flower), Chuanwu and Caowu, that is, the medicine of Mongolian sweat. " The book "Medicine Huiyuan" has been extinct in China for a long time, and it has returned from Japan as a rare book in recent years. This book mentions Mongolian sweat medicine when talking about rhododendron flowers, and its use is also to cure poison and sore, which is very different from other anesthetic drugs in Ming and Qing dynasties and novels in terms of main composition and purpose. Other "Mongolian sweat medicine" does not seem to mention rhododendron flowers, and now it is believed that Mei Yuanshi, a Mongolian sweat medicine, was inspired by the divine doctor Hua Tuo's "Ma Zisan".

So where did Hua Tuo's "Ma Zeisan" recipe come from? Western scholars have pointed out that Hua Tuo's "Ma boiling Powder" is very similar to the early anesthetic in West Asia. Mr. Chen Yinke wrote an article on the biographies of Cao Chong-Hua and the Story of Buddhism in Tsinghua University, pointing out that "Hua Tuo" is quite related to the "god of medicine" in Sanskrit. Hua Tuo's real name is "Fu" rather than "Tuo". At that time, the folk compared Hua Tuo to the god of medicine in Indian mythology, so it was called "Hua Tuo". Chen Yinke obviously means that the name Hua Tuo comes from Indian mythology, which was spread among the people by good people in China at that time, so that Chen Shou finally took it into Chinese history and compiled the Chronicles of the three Kingdoms. Therefore, some people think that both Hua Tuo and Ma Zisan came from ancient India, but what is certain is that even if the Middle Earth in the Wei and Jin dynasties did prepare Ma boiling Powder according to the prescription, it could only be dominated by sheep, rather than the mandala, which was commonly used as a drug in India, because the mandala flower did not spread to the Central Plains until at least the Tang Dynasty.

As for how rhododendron, which was once used to cure poison and sore and save people, has become a medicine for sweat, it is like the double blade of a sharp sword. I do not know whether there were cases of using Mongolian Khan medicine to set up a game and turn people to the ground to seek money and beauty in the Song Dynasty, but at least when Shi Nai'an wrote the Water margin, Mongolian Khan medicine had already worried the hearts of people who traveled around the country. According to the statistics of careful people, the criminal records of "Mongolian sweat medicine" in the Ming and Qing dynasties came almost exclusively from the south-mainly because raw materials were readily available, and no wonder that was the main distribution area where sheep hesitated.

Soft-shelled turtle traction machine medicine

In the case of the "candle shadow axe sound" in the Song Dynasty, Song Taizu died suddenly overnight, and later generations suspected that it was the evil hand of his brother Song Taizong. There are many rumors about the means of poisoning by Emperor Taizong of Song Dynasty: Wang Mengchang after the fall of Shu and Li Yu after the Southern Tang Dynasty were poisoned. After Li Houzhu, who is said to be full of poetic talent, was placed under house arrest, he cried and sighed at his former minister, and wrote words of nostalgia for his homeland, "Xiaolou was in the east wind last night, and the country could not bear to go back to the middle of the moon." so Song Taizong nodded and gave Li Houzhu a tractor medicine.

When future generations recalled this festival, they said very succinctly: "the song of 'Xiaolou and Dongfeng last night' was not finished, and the machine came along." It is not specific to say that the main body of Li is like a crossbow, leaning back and forth, like a bow that is drawn and let go, one straight and one curved, so dozens of times. Today, however, according to the symptoms of the toxic attack of this drug, it is concluded that the poison in Li Yu comes from the seeds of the soft-shelled turtle.

The word "pan" in the name of the soft-shelled turtle clearly indicates that it originated from Outland. It is wild in the forests of the east coast of India, and its seed is called nux vomica in the Compendium of Materia Medica, named for its shape. The soft-shelled turtle was introduced into Europe in the 16th century and was widely used to kill rats and other harmful animals two hundred years later.

The brucine in the soft-shelled turtle destroys the central nervous system. After eating it, the head begins to twitch and finally dies in contact with the feet, which is terrifying. In the mystery of the shoe buckle, there is a description of the death of strychnine poisoning in the mystery of the shoe buckle, and what is even more surprising is the riddle of the shoe buckle, in which the killer puts brucine into the victim's hot coffee to mask the bitterness of the poison-the author clearly knows that brucine is the most bitter drug known.

Where did Song Taizong get such mechanical medicine?

According to records, when Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty first became emperor, he visited the palace on horseback. There was a warehouse without a name. It turned out to be the warehouse where poison was hidden in the palace. The poisons in the library are divided into seven grades, and the poison ranks third, and the most powerful one is "the death of nose and smell". These poisons were paid tribute every three years in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangdong, Sichuan and Shu, and it is said that they have not been used since the founding of the people's Republic of China in the Song Dynasty. Song Huizong wrote an edict saying: "this is the previous generation to kill the courtiers of the court, so that the subjects have unpardonable crimes, it should be a proper punishment, how is it appropriate to use this?" So he ordered that the tribute should be stopped and all the poisons in the storehouse were burned. However, if we think about it carefully, if it is true that "it has not been used since the founding of the Song Dynasty", how can we use "one tribute every three years"? Song Taizong's medicine should be extracted from the poison storehouse in the palace, both from Liangguang, Sichuan and Shu, or for the soft-shelled turtle, or for his close relative, Yunnan nux vomica.

Also a close relative of the soft-shelled turtle, the arrow tree growing in South America contains strychnine, which is similar to brucine in chemical structure. The Indians used arrow poison wood to make arrow poison and painted it on the arrow as a weapon. Amazingly, although this poison is very lethal as quiver, the prey after being shot has little effect on the eater. Modern studies have found that strychnine is difficult to penetrate the mucous membrane and difficult to absorb orally, so after the Indians shoot animals with curare, they can eat animal meat without poisoning. The Indians kept this quiver secret for so long that this beauty was only discovered in recent years. At that time, the Qing emperor suffered from archery hares and pheasants may have arrow poison, so he had to hire people to raise Haidongqing and use eagles to catch hares and pheasants. Just imagine, if the emperor of the Qing Dynasty of China had obtained the secret recipe of arrow poison from the Indians as soon as possible, he Lao-Jian would have established an eagle-raising camp like the sentinel battalion and the trumpet gate, and at the same time kept a number of hawk handles for feeding the eagle.

"pick Wei, pick Wei, Wei also stop. If you return, you will not stop at the age of one. " The "picking Wei" in the Book of songs comes from two remnants of the late Yin Dynasty-Boyi and Shuqi. Boyi and Shuqi were the sons of the monarch of Guzhu State at the end of Yin Dynasty. When Guzhu Jun was alive, Shuqi was the heir to the throne. When Guzhu Jun died, Shuqi wanted to give up the throne to his eldest brother Boyi. Boyi said that he dared not disobey his father's orders, so he fled; Shuqi still refused to become king and also fled. The brothers gave way to the country because they did not want to help do evil, and when the week became strong in the West, the two brothers came to Qishan, the capital of Zhou. When King Wu of Zhou destroyed the Shang Dynasty, Boyi and Shuqi decided that King Wu of Zhou was violent and ashamed to obey King Wu of Zhou, so they ran to Shouyang Mountain and did not want to eat or could not eat the food of the Zhou Dynasty, so they ate Wei on the mountain until they died at the foot of Shouyang Mountain.

Why did Boyi and Shuqi eat to death?

Generally speaking, people could not accept the saying that Boyi and Shuqi would die while eating Wei, so since the Shu Han of the three Kingdoms came down, they made up a legend that Boyi and Shuqi starved to death: "A wild woman said,'Zi Yi does not eat Zhou millet. This is also the vegetation of the Zhou Dynasty.'" So he starved to death. " That is to say, since Zhou Su was not eaten, Wei of the Zhou Dynasty could not eat, nothing, and naturally starved to death.

Save the wild pea

Among the wild pea plants, many are food passed down from ancient times, such as the small nest vegetable which is widely distributed in central and eastern China. Su Dongpo once wrote a poem praising: "the pods are round and small, and the locust teeth are fine and abundant." On the one hand, this poem is praising the saving of wild peas, but on the other hand, this sentence is praising small nest vegetables. In fact, since the Shang and Zhou dynasties, most wild beans have been used as diners, but after all, the ancient botanical knowledge is limited, vague, a paragraph, a poem, what is meant, even if careful textual research, there will inevitably be disputes or deviations.

Mr. Lu Xun is not pan-moralized, he thinks that Boyi and Shuqi have been picking Wei and eating them. In the novel "newly edited Cai Wei", he listed a recipe for Boyi and Shuqi: Wei Tang, Wei Tang, Wei Jao, Qing Wei, braised Wei Sprout in the original soup, and before the death of tender Wei leaves, Boyi and Shuqi made a song: "go to the West Mountain to pick its crape myrtle, robbers come to represent the robbers and do not know this is wrong." Shennong Yu Xia suddenly passed, where am I going? Oh, go to hell, you're doomed to be unlucky! " The original text of this song "Caiwei Song" is "climb the West Mountain, pick its Wei." Violence in exchange for violence, I do not know what is wrong. Shennongyu summer suddenly did not go, I went home safely? When you groan, your life is dying! " Mr. Lu Xun studied medicine, but he did not mention why "Vicki" could eat two ancients to death. The main reason is that Lu Xun confused "Wei" with "Vicki" after all.

According to the Book of songs Xiaoya in April, Zhu Xi in the Southern Song Dynasty regarded Wei and fern as the same thing. In Japan, which was deeply influenced by Zhu Xi, Wei simply read the same way as Osmunda Osmunda (a kind of fern). Mr. Lu Xun studied biology in Japan and naturally confused Wei and fern. In fact, Wei is a kind of beans, ancient and modern people have already reached a consensus, and this kind of beans have a characteristic-both raw mountain and raw water edge. In the poems about Wei in the pre-Qin Dynasty, there are not only the description of collecting Wei on the hillside, but also the experience of collecting Wei by the water. What kind of plant is this kind of aquatic bean that can grow on a mountain?

Until the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty, Fang Yizhi gave a clear answer in Tongya: "Wei, today's wild pea." In particular, he did not evade the issue of aquatic plants, quoting the saying of "Wei Ye Xiping" in the Jin Dynasty, linking Wei and aquatic plants. There are many kinds of wild peas. Fang Yizhi said that the full name of wild peas is "wild peas to save the famine".

Even Western scholars believe that the wild pea is probably the earliest plant domesticated by people in Western Asia and Eastern Europe. It has been cultivated for 5,000 years, and even its Latin root sounds somewhat similar to the Chinese word "Wei". But how can such a plant, which was eaten and even domesticated everywhere a long time ago, abdicate or even disappear from our diet? And how can Boyi and Shuqi eat to death?

The reason is simple-to save wild peas, the whole grass is poisonous, and people and animals will be chronically poisoned after eating a large amount of food for a long time.

The toxicity of saving wild pea varied with the growing period, and the toxicity was the highest in flowering and fruiting stage. the main symptoms after large intake were chronic poisoning. Horses and cattle fell ill within 30 days after eating the plant, showing emaciation and unique neurological symptoms. such as lethargy, stumbling gait, turning to excitement in the middle stage of poisoning, and drowsiness again at the end of poisoning. Unfortunately, the ancients knew little about chronic poisoning, and the relevant research results gradually became clear in recent years, so the culprit who killed Boyi and Shuqi was able to surface.

Nowadays, some people don't know what to do and think that it is safe to eat it for the words "famine relief" and "pea". Fortunately, it is not that people do not eat food, but occasionally eat a chronic poison called "Wei" with less dose and lower frequency. the toxicity is not obvious yet. At that time, Boyi and Shuqi were unaware of chronic poisoning, but they were arrogant and lived on a single diet, and eventually died. According to Mr. Lu Xun, "the doomed bad luck" was the only way to admit the decline of fate.

Stellera chamaejasme L.

Stellera chamaejasme, also known as Stellera chamaejasme, in the prairie, some people also call it "heartbroken grass". Of course, wolf poison is not as toxic as Gelsemium, but it is inevitable to cause abdominal pain and diarrhea, so it is known as "heartbreak". The clumps of Stellera chamaejasme venom on the prairie are very good-looking, and there are often unknown tourists taking pictures with them, but they do not realize that this thing does not eat cattle and sheep, it is a poisonous weed that cannot be grazed all over the country, and it is a symbol of grassland degradation.

Sheep horn sagging

Yangjiao is also commonly known as "gut-breaking grass". It is precisely because of the symptoms of abdominal pain and nausea that often occur after being poisoned, and the serious ones suffer from weak heartbeat, difficulty breathing, and even die of death. Fortunately, Yangjiao flowers bloom strange, easy to identify, and common fruits and wild vegetables are not similar, after all to avoid the possibility of some poisoning. According to the classification of plants, Yangjiao belongs to the family Apocynaceae, which is more or less poisonous, such as common cultivated flowers such as oleander and yellow oleander. One of their common characteristics is that there is white milk in the plant. Therefore, if you see milky sap after breaking off branches and leaves, most of them are poisonous plants and plants, stay away and quickly avoid them.

Digitalis

Digitalis is obviously not so hairy, but it is also called Digitalis. There is a legend in the West that Digitalis is called "fox gloves". It is said that bad goblins give the flowers of Rehmannia glutinosa to the cunning fox and let the fox put the flowers on his feet to eliminate the sound of his feet when he is looking for food. It is this plant that blossoms like gloves that almost killed the fledgling 007 in the movie Casino Royale-a small amount of digitalis can be used as a cardiotonic, eating too much, needless to say. Just like the "rookie" 007, heart failure or even cardiac arrest.

Aconitum Aconitum

There are hundreds of species of aconitum in China, distributed all over the country, with slightly different colors, but the flowers are more or less the same, all like helmet-shaped flowers. The root of Aconitum is the most poisonous, and it is an "excellent" variety for making poison in ancient China. Aconitum belongs to Ranunculaceae, this family of plants, often beautiful roses, often with toxicity, can be said to hide a knife in a smile. Although Luli Aconitum is not a highly toxic member of the aconitine family, it is a common product in the western grasslands. Livestock avoid poison by themselves and refuse to eat this poisonous grass, so often the hillsides swept by cattle and sheep for a long time are blue and purple, which is poisonous grass standing in groups.

Scorpion grass

Scorpion grass like its name, if it is stung by its jellyfish hair, redness, swelling and pain are inevitable. Scorpion grass belongs to the urticaceae. This group includes all kinds of nettles. All those that have stinging hairs can hurt people are somewhat toxic. Although they are not life-threatening, they are really acceptable to people. No wonder Urticaceae plants in some places are called "biting cats" and "biting dogs". Legend has it that some mountain areas feed on the buds of Urticaceae plants, while they are extremely young and non-toxic, scald with hot water and cook with cold salad, which seems to be particularly pleasing to the heart.

Veratrum

Legend has it that among the hundred herbs Shennong tasted, there was Chenopodium, which was classified as one of the most toxic. Often the situation of mistakenly eating Chenopodium occurs at the end of spring, when people go up the mountain to dig wild onions and dig up the similar leaf shape of Chenopodium to come back, stir-fry and eat it. In fact, Chenopodium is also on the list of traditional Chinese medicine, the entry-level formula of traditional Chinese medicine "eighteen anti -, nineteen fear" there is a classic sentence: "all ginseng Xinshao betray Chenopodium." It means that the likes of ginseng, salvia miltiorrhiza and Codonopsis pilosula, together with Asarum, Radix Paeoniae Rubra, Radix Paeoniae Alba, are contrary to the medicinal properties of Veratrum. When used inadvertently, the toxicity of Chenopodium doubles.

Acid mold

Some children grow up in the mountain village and are familiar with a kind of plant with sour leaves. Although the taste is not good, the sour taste can stimulate saliva secretion, just like Cao Mengde's role of "hoping for plums to quench thirst." if you chew more sour leaves, you can also slightly quench your thirst. So the acid mold has naturally become a "safe food" in the impression of many people. In fact, the whole grass is poisonous, cattle and horses eat, stumble, like drunkenness, and then convulsion, weakness, and even death. Therefore, for the "non-toxic" plants in experience, it is better to weigh them before they are imported. If you do not eat them, you will not starve to death. If you eat them, the consequences are sometimes hard to predict.