CHINESE NAMES OF PLANTS. 



A preliminary list of the trees and shrubs of North Honan. 



J. HERS. 



The following list id based upon specimens collected in 

 the Northern part of the Honan province, on both sides of 

 the Yellow river, approximately between 34° and 36 u lat. 

 North. 



The. Chinese names given here have no pretention to 

 Wen-li; they are just the common names in use among 

 farmers, mountaineers and woodcutters; as these people are 

 apt to forge a name whenever they do not know the true 

 one, care has been taken to accept none of these appella- 

 tions unless it had been obtained from four or five different 

 sources. 



In many instances, these common names have been 

 found to be the same as those quoted in the Kiu Huang 

 P'en Ts'ao (ftSEfcE), the Shuo Sung (tft M) and other 

 Chinese works. But when this help has failed, it has not 

 always been an easy task to find characters giving as clear 

 an interpretation of the sounds as heard from the natives, 

 and they must therefore be taken with reserve. Such is 

 the case for instance, with the "jang" used all over Honan 

 for woody climbers, and the "kiang" used for several oaks 

 and benzoins. 



So far as botany is concerned, we are on much safer 

 ground, as most of the specimens referred to were identified 

 at the Arnold Arboretum; they could certainly not have 

 been treated with more authority and I wish to express 

 here my gratitude to the Directors of this Institution for the 

 very kind support and advices received from them. 



The two books above-mentioned offer a considerable 

 interest to the student of Honan plants, for they were both 

 written in Honan and based upon observations mostly made 

 in the Mihsien district or in the region of the sacred Sung 

 Shan; very little remains, in any of these places, of the 

 wild flora, and one must now go farther West to find any 

 remnants of the old forests. The only districts really worth 

 visiting are those comprised between the Loho, on the 



