http://internationalhempassociation.org/jiha/iha03207.html
Shao Hong1 and Robert C. Clarke2
History and literature Contemporary Chinese
Cannabis studies began in the 1950's, soon after the People's Republic of China was founded. During those days, a general natural resources survey was carried out all over China. The medicinal and economic values of
Cannabis were first recorded in
Flora of Chinese Medicinal Plants (Pei and Chou 1951) and it is also recorded in the
Chinese Pharmacopoeia of 1957. Chinese scientists early noticed that
Cannabis is a widely distributed plant in China and has medical and other productive applications.
Two of the first Chinese books on plant taxonomy, Pictorial Handbook of Chinese Plants (Chia et al. 195 and Dictionary of Families and Genera of Chinese Seed Plants (How 195, simultaneously named Cannabis from China as C. sativa L. Since this name was also recorded in
Iconographia Cormophytorum Sinicorum (ASBI 1972), one of the most comprehensive and highly respected Chinese plant taxonomy reference books,
C. sativa L. has been regarded as the representative name for Chinese
Cannabis.
Another form name, C. sativa L. f. ruderalis (Janisch.) Chu, was recorded in
Flora Plantarum Herbacearum Chine Boreali-Orientalis (Chu 1959). This new form name was also adopted by
Flora of Chinese Economic Plants (Anon. 1961) and specifically represented the
Cannabis distributed in some areas of northeastern China. The specimens representing this form in Chinese herbaria do not exhibit the key anatomical character described by Janischevsky (1924),
i.e., that the fruit base becomes elongated and forms a "caruncle". However, his collections from Altai and Yili in Xinjiang Province possess the so-called "caruncle" only in some fruits from the same plant. The lack of a caruncle may result from incomplete maturation. Based on the lack of consistent expression of this primary discriminating character, both the form name and the original species name are questionable.
Zhao (1991) proposed that there are four varieties of C. sativa L. distributed in China; sativa, spontanea, indica and kafiristanica. However, while only presenting a basic classification key derived from Small and Cronquist (1976), she did not provide Chinese representative voucher specimens or delimit the range of these taxa except that the specimens from Fukang, Xinjiang, was identified as spontanea.
The Morphology Department of the Botanical Institute of the Academia Sinica (ASBI 1960) reported on the pollen surface features of Chinese
Cannabis in
Pollen Morphologies of Chinese Plants. The ASBI
Handbook of Chinese Oil Plants (1973) discusses the constituents of
Cannabis seed oil. Other important chemical components of
Cannabis such as the cannabinoids, and the terpenoids which account for its unique aromas, are listed in
Lexicon of Chinese Traditional Medicinal Plants (Jiangsu New Medical College 1975),
Compilation of Chinese Herbal Medicines (Anon. 197
and
Flora of Economic Plants in Shandong Province (Anon. 197
. Other papers scattered in various journals report the cannabinoid content of specimens from several provinces (
e.g. Ling
et al. 1985, Liu
et al. 1992, Chen
et al. 1993, Zhan
et al. 1994).
Large scale comprehensive scientific research on
Cannabis from 1986 through 1990 (encompassing the disciplines of chemistry, anatomy, morphology, pharmacognosy, drug use survey, etc.) was carried out in several institutes in a coordinated program organized by the National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products under the organization of the Bureau of Public Health. The results are collected mostly in
Corpus of Scientific Theses on Cannabis (Anonymous 1991).