SCHIZANDRA CHINENSIS

SCHIZANDRA CHINENSIS.—五味子 (Wu-wei-tzŭ), 1477. This is confounded with its allied genus Kadsura, and in Japan Kadsura japonica is 南五味 (Nan-wu-wei), and Schizandra chinensis 北五味 (Pei-wu-wei), 996. The drug is said to have five distinct tastes. The skin and pulp of the fruit are sweet and sour, the kernels are pungent and bitter, and the whole has a salty taste. This gives rise to the name, “five flavors.” The plant is a climber, and the fruit is a berry, being black in the case of Schizandra nigra, and red in that of Kadsura and Schizandra chinensis. The fruit and branches contain a great amount of viscid mucoid material, and the Japanese women are said by Siebold to dress their hair with it, it being also used to size the Japanese mulberry-bark paper. The specimens of the drug generally contain portions of the stalks of the berries, which are collected in a head as they grow upon the trees which support the trailing plant. Tonic, aphrodisiac, pectoral, and lenitive properties are ascribed to the plant, although the Chinese unwisely reject the branches, which yield a mucilaginous decoction, efficacious in dysentery, gonorrhœa, and coughs. The plant is believed to contain the quintessence of the five elements as the basis of its properties.