GLYCINE HISPIDA. 



3 



GLYCINE HISPIDA, Maxim: 



[Fide Plate LXXXV.] 



Soy bean or Japan pea; bhat (N.-W. Himalaya); kajuwa (Tarai) ; bhatnas, bhatwas 



(Nepal and N. Tirhoot). 



Natural order Leguminosce. An annual clothed with ferruginous hairs. Stems stout, suberect, 

 or climbing. Leaves trifoliolate, on long petioles. Flowers small, reddish. Pods 2-3 seeded, axil- 

 lary, linear oblong, recurved, and densely pubescent. 



The Glycine Soja, under which name the soy bean is described in the Flora of 

 British India, is another species, and has been identified with G. ussuriensis of Regel, 

 which grows quite wild in Mandchuria, whereas this plant has nowhere been found 

 as unmistakably wild. M. De Candolle, however, remarks that " known facts and 

 historical and philological probabilities tend to show that the species was wild from 

 Cochin China to the south of Japan and to Java when the ancient inhabitants of this 

 region began to cultivate it at a very remote period, to use it for food in various ways, 

 and to obtain from it varieties of which the number is remarkable, especially in Japan." 



In these Provinces its cultivation is confined to the lower slopes of the Himalaya 

 and to a few of the neighbouring plains districts. It is grown in poor soils during 

 the rainy season, and represents a very inferior variety of the Japan pea, which under 

 proper cultivation is a much more robust plant, with broader leaves and larger pods 

 and seeds. M. De Candolle states that it is one of the five plants which the Chinese 

 Emperor Chinnong commanded 4,000 years ago to be sown every year with great 

 solemnity. 



The plant affords excellent fodder for all kinds of stock, if harvested before it is 

 fully matured. 



From the seed a preparation called miso is largely used in China and Japan ; and 

 the green pods yield the well known sauce. 



Professor Church says that the chemical composition of the soy bean entitles it 

 "to the highest place even amongst the pulses, as a food capable of supplementing the 

 deficiences of rice and of other eminently starchy grains. Very few vegetable products 

 are so rich as this bean at once in albuminoids and in fat or oil, the former constituent 

 amounting on the average to 35 per cent, and the latter to 19. * Potash 



forms nearly one-half and phosphorus pentoxide one-third of the ash. " 



Explanation of Plate LXXXV. 



1. Pod with portion of one valve removed. 



2. Stamens and pistil. 



3.) 



6. \ Flower. 



7. J 



4. Portion of keel. 



5. Wing. 



* References :— Watt, Diet. Econom. Prod., III., 510. Fl. Br. Ind., II., 184, under G. %a,Sieb. and Zucc. ; Church, 

 Food Grains of India, HO. Atkinson, Him. Dist,, I., 696. Soya hispida, Mcench., Dohe/ios Soja, Linn. ; Roxb. Fl. lad. 



(Clarke's Ed.), 563. DC, L'Orig. PI. Cult., 264, 



B 2 



