Eucommia

The area of ​​the eucommia vulgaris is located entirely in China , mostly along the Yangtze River , in its middle course. It looks on the map as expanding to the northwest, and then to the south, a strip that runs from Zhejiang through Anhui , Hubei and Hunan , covering the very south of Shanxi and Shaanxi , and then through the center and east of Sichuan , Guizhou , west of Guangxi and east of Yunnan almost reaching here the border with Vietnam .

Evkommiya grows at altitudes from 300 to 2500 m above sea level, mainly in the undergrowth of mountain subtropical forests . Single trees are found much lower. It is believed that in the wild, Eucommia survived in the forests of Shaanxi, Gansu , Anhui and Zhejiang.

Deciduous trees up to 20 m high with an ovoid crown . Shoots with rare pubescence, golden brown, covered with a waxy coating. The bark is brownish-gray with elongated lentils, longitudinally fissured on old trunks . The root system is superficial, the main mass of the root lobes is located at a depth of about 30 cm.

The kidneys are ovoid, pointed, with six to ten external short-pubescent or slightly ciliary scales. The leaf arrangement is alternate. Leaves without stipules , from elongated-ovate to elliptic, 7–16 (up to 24) cm long, 2.5–6 (up to 13) cm wide, pointed, serrate, with a rounded or wide-wedge-shaped base; the teeth of the upper half of the plate are smaller and more often located than in the lower half; in adulthood, the leaves on top are bare, slightly wrinkled, dark green. The venation is cirrus, lateral veins are five to six pairs, curved and highly branched. Petioles 1.5–2.5 cm long, scattered-pubescent. At the fracture of the leaves, numerous white gutta-percha threads are visible.

Plants are usually dioecious , but under some conditions on plants bearing stamen flowers, a few pistillate can also arise. Single flowers , collected in 5-11 pieces at the base of annual shoots in the bosoms of the bracts , without perianths ; stamen - with eight (four to ten) linear, red-brown anthers on short threads; pistil - on a short leg with one pestle with a seated bifurcated stigma ; single- ovary ovary with one ovule .

The fruit is oblong, laterally compressed, winged nutlet 3-4 cm long and 0.6-1.5 cm wide, on a short stalk. Seeds with large endosperm , direct germ , equal in length to the endosperm, and narrow cotyledons . The weight of a thousand seeds (fruits) 60-120 g.

Flowering in April, blooms simultaneously with the blooming of leaves or before blooming. Fruiting in September - October.

The plant is cultivated for gutta-percha. Gutta-percha is found in all organs of the plant (leaves, stem, root, pericarp), in special gutto-receptacles (unbranched cells with club-shaped ends), which are located along the conducting bundles, that is, confined to the veins. The sheet guttocapacity system is a network that “duplicates” the venation.

The bark of shoots of branches and trunks of eucommia ( lat. Cortex Eucommiae ), collected during sap flow and dried, is a medicinal raw material for tinctures with hypotensive effect ^[3] and used to treat the early stage of hypertension . Its effect is most likely due to chlorogenic and caffeic acids, as well as glycoside aucubin ^[3] .

Taxonomy

The genus Evcommia is a member of the monotypic family Eucommiaceae of the order Garryales .

Modern and extinct species

In the modern era, this genus is monotypic, its only surviving representative is the Eucommia vulgaris , or Eucommia ilmidae ( lat. Eucommia ulmoides ), grown in China and cultivated in almost all countries of the Northern Hemisphere with a mild subtropical and moderately warm climate .

Several other types of eucommia are described by fossils:

• † Eucommia constans
• † Eucommia eocenica
• † Eucommia jeffersonensis
• † Eucommia montana - Eucommia Mountain
• † Eucommia rolandii

• Zhilin S.G. Family of eucommia (Eucommiaceae) // Plant Life: 6 vol. T. 5. Part 1. Flowering plants / ed. A. L. Takhtadzhyana . - M.: Education, 1980. - S. 254—259.
• Family 20. Eucommia - Eucommiaceae // Trees and shrubs of the USSR. Wild, cultivated and promising for introduction. / Ed. volumes S. Ya. Sokolov . - M. - L .: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , 1954. - T. III. Angiosperms. Trochodendron families - Rosaceae. - S. 14-19. - 872 s. - 3000 copies.
• Muravyova D.A. Pharmacognosy: - M .; Medicine, 1978, 656 p., With silt.