What are the medicinal values ​​of plants?

Plants are ever-changing in our lives. Different plants have different functions. Plants are now all around us, but what people don’t know is that the so-called plants also have good medicinal value. Generally, the wild vegetables seen on the roadside may be a kind of medicine. So what are the nutritional values ​​of plants?

There are many kinds of medicinal plants, and their medicinal parts are different. Some are all used as medicine, such as Leonurus japonicus, Prunella vulgaris, etc.; some are used as medicine, such as ginseng, Datura, Belamcanda chinensis, Platycodon grandiflorum, Rhodiola rosea, etc.; some need to be extracted before being used as medicine, such as quinine. In ancient China, Shennong's Herbal Classic classified medicines into three grades: superior, medium, and inferior according to their efficacy. In addition to continuing to use the three-category classification, "Shennong's Herbal Classic Annotations" also created a method of dividing the medicines into herbal, fruit, vegetable, and grain categories based on their properties. The Compendium of Materia Medica adopts the natural property classification method, dividing the collected medicines into 16 classes and 60 categories, and based on physiological and ecological conditions, divides the grass medicines into mountain grass, fragrant grass, marsh grass, poisonous grass, creeping grass, stone grass, moss, etc. This is the most complete classification system in ancient China.

In medicine, drugs are generally classified according to their properties and pharmacological effects. Traditional Chinese medicine often divides drugs into categories such as antipyretic drugs, heat-clearing drugs, anti-rheumatic drugs, qi-regulating drugs, and tonic drugs according to their properties; modern medicine often divides drugs into categories such as sedatives, analgesics, cardiotonic drugs, and anti-cancer drugs according to their pharmacological effects. Medicinal botany can reflect the relationship of medicinal plants by classifying them according to plant systems, which is beneficial for the study of morphology, anatomy and composition. Chinese medicine identification and medicinal plant cultivation are often classified according to the medicinal parts, including roots, rhizomes, barks, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, whole herbs, etc., which facilitates the identification of medicinal characteristics and the understanding of their cultivation features.

The chemical composition of plants is relatively complex. Some components are common to all plants, such as cellulose, protein, oil, starch, sugars, pigments, etc.; some components are unique only to certain plants, such as alkaloids, glycosides, volatile oils, organic acids, tannins, etc.

Each type of chemical component has certain characteristics, and the appearance, color, smell, and taste of the medicinal materials can generally be used as one of the means of preliminary inspection and judgment. For example, if there are no oily spots on the cross section of the medicinal material after it is broken, or there are oil marks after squeezing, it mostly contains fat or volatile oil; those with a powdery layer mostly contain starch and sugar; those with a special smell mostly contain volatile oil, coumarin, and lactone; those with sweet taste mostly contain sugar; those with neutral taste mostly contain alkaloids, glycosides, and bitter substances; those with sour taste contain organic acids; those with astringent taste mostly contain tannins, etc.

The medicinal value of plants is very rich, because there are many kinds of plants in life, and plants have different functions. The wild flowers, fruits, leaves or weeds we often see on the roadside may be very common Chinese medicines. When choosing these Chinese medicines, we must use them under the doctor's instructions.