110 BOTANICON SINICUM. 
Ch‘u chou and Ho chou [both in An hui, App. 25, 71]. 
Its flowers are of different colours—yellow, purple, red, 
white—and appear in the 3rd month. The flowers and leaves 
of the wild-growing plant are the same as in the cultivated 
sorts, but the wild mou tan produces only single flowers. 
In the 5th month it produces fruit of a black. colour, 
resembling a cock’s head, with large seeds. The root is of 
a yellowish white colour, from five to seven inches long, of 
the thickness of a pencil-holder. 
K‘ou Tsune-sur [Sung dynasty |:—The rind of the root 
of the mountain mow tan is that which is used in medicine. 
The cultivated plant produces also dark red and pale blue 
flowers. 
Li Sar-cuen :—From ancient times the mou tan flower 
has been called 7E E hua wang (king of flowers). Ou Yang- 
stu | Sung dynasty] enumerates more than thirty cultivated 
varieties of it. The Hua pu (a treatise on flowers, Sung 
dynasty) records that to the west of Tan chou and Yen chou 
[in Shen si, v. supra] the mow tan is so common that the 
country people use its wood for fuel like the king (Vitex) 
and ki (Zizyphus). 
The mou tan is the China Tree Peony, Peonia Moutan, 
Sims., a favorite garden-flower of the Chinese, which they 
have cultivated from a remote period. In ancient times Lo 
yang, the old capital of China, in Ho nan, was famed for its 
mou tan flowers [see sub 52]. 
A good drawing of the plant is found in the Ch. [XXV, 
18]. 
Tatar. Cat. 39 :—Mow tan p'i (rind). Radix Pwoniw 
moutan.— GAUGER [28] figures and describes the drug. In 
the drug-shops it is simply called FF FE tan pi.—P, SMITA, 
169. | Ss 
Cust. Med., p. 104 
(87) :—Tan pi ex orted 1885 from 
Wu hu 1,606 piculs, Ya P 
