CHAPTER VII 

 THE MORE IMPORTANT PLANT PRODUCTS 



Wild and Cultivated Trees of Economic Importance 



CHINA is remarkably rich in raw economic products of 

 vegetable origin, especially in oil, fat, and saponin-yield- 

 ing fruits and seeds, lacquer-Vcirnish, tannin, and dye- 

 products, fibres and paper-making material. Some of these 

 products are in increasing demand for export trade with the 

 outside world, and will undoubtedly develop into great industries 

 of the future. In this and the succeeding chapter is given an 

 account of the more important of the products derived from 

 central and Western China. This region is the source whence 

 the majority of the raw articles are obtained that are exported 

 from Hankow, the great trade entrepot of the Yangtsze 

 Valley. 



One of the most important of all Chinese products is 

 wood oil. This is obtained from the seeds of two species of 

 Aleurites, a small genus of low-growing trees belonging to the 

 Spurge family. The two species for the most part occupy 

 distinct geographical areas, but both have been recorded as 

 growing close together in the province of Fokien. In the 

 south of China wood oil is the product of A. montana, 

 which bears its flowers on the current season's shoots at the 

 time when the leaves are expanded, and has an egg-shaped 

 fruit, sharply pointed, and unevenly ridged on the outside. 

 This is the " Mu-yu shu " — literally " Wood Oil tree " of the 

 Chinese. In central and Western China it is A. Fordii, known 

 as the " T'ung-yu shu " — literally " T'ung Oil tree," which 

 produces this valuable oil. This latter species bears its 

 flowers at the ends of the previous year's shoots before the 



leaves unfold, and has a fiattened-round, apple-hke fruit, only 



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