Blackberry Lily

What’s still blooming somewhere: Tea roses, California poppy, red hot poker, winecup, chamisa, chocolate flower, chrysanthemum, Mexican hat, áñil del muerto, broom senecio,
tahokia daisies, Maximilian sunflowers, purple and hairy golden asters, untouched blanket flower buds, low growing Mönch asters.

Bedding plants: Moss rose.

Inside: African aptenia and asparagus fern.

What’s turned/turning red: Pasture rose, spirea, raspberry, sand cherry, skunk bush, leadwort, pink evening primrose, Virginia creeper.

What’s turned/turning yellow: Cottonwood, globe and weeping willows, black locust, Siberian pea, Siberian elm, tamarix, beauty bush, cherries, peach, rugosa rose, lilacs, lilies, hosta, ladybells.

Animal sightings: Large black harvester and small dark ants

Weather: Tuesday’s morning’s rain followed by great squawking of birds towards the river when I was leaving for work; 10:38 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: When Americans and the Chinese look at the same thing, say a blackberry lily, they don’t see the same thing.

When Thomas Jefferson planted what he knew as Ixia chinensis in 1807, he was probably interested in the loose clusters of six, spotted, orange petals that open late morning. Soon other flowers from other parts of the world surpassed their beauty, and the iris-shaped leaves persisted on their own in ditches, along roads, and in fields east of the Rockies.

Today, gardeners are told to grow the shorter, less garish Freckle Face cultivar for its fall and winter interest. Around September 26, the pear-shaped pods on my plants split open to reveal rows of shiny black seeds. The reflexed outer wraps have since dried a papery white.

When the Chinese look at shegan they see medicine.

Steven Foster and Yue Chongxi interpret Shi Zhen Li as having recommended it for throat cancer in 1578. When George Stuart translated Li’s work in 1911, he simply said it had "some special popularity in diseases of the throat" and reported it was used for breast cancer.

Chinese and scientists from other countries that still have some respect for traditional plant medicine have been combing reports of traditional practices looking for potentially useful plants. In the 1970's, doctors at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences were testing the folk methods for treating bronchitis.

By the 1990's, chemists were isolating more than a dozen compounds from the rhizomes of Belamcanda chinensis, and identifying some as flavonoids. In 2000, Li Xin Zhou and Mao Lin had been able to create a synthetic form of one, and demonstrate its effectiveness against inflamation. Lin and others later showed the compound was a powerful antioxidant, and it has since attracted a great deal of interest.

Most recently, Asian scientists have been doing the necessary work to make possible the mass production of the blackberry lily compounds. They have been creating tests for the cost-efficient evaluation of extracts, verifying that cultivated plants don’t differ in efficacy from the ones used in laboratory tests, and trying to develop synthetic forms.

Meantime, European scientists associated with a German herbal medicine company, Bionorica, have identified two of the flavonoids, irigenin and tectorigenin, as phytoestrogens that could be used to counter problems caused by sex hormones, especially prostrate cancer. They took out their first patent on a blackberry lily extract in 2002.

Most Americans never look at the roots that so interest the Chinese. Gardeners can buy plants grown from seed supplied by Jelitto, and are told to let the short-lived perennials perpetuate themselves by going to seed. They wouldn’t know the dried roots are chrome yellow inside and have an acid taste when fresh.

The Chinese aren’t particularly interested in the inedible seeds. In the nineties, some Japanese chemists identified four enediones in the seeds, but none have stimulated any further research.

American’s don’t just not see the blackberry lily’s roots. They’ve been told it’s a member of the iris family and therefore should be avoided as potentially toxic. Chinese don’t just ignore the seeds. They’ve been warned that only the roots are useful and not to substitute aerial parts in their formulas. We both see what we’ve been told to see.

Notes:
Bionorica AG, Wolfgang Wuttke, Hubertus Jarry, Michael A. Popp, Volker Christoffel, and Barbara Spengler. "Use of Extracts and Preparations from Iris Plants and Tectorigenin as Medicaments," patent 2002/092111, 21 November 2002.

Chang, Tzu-Ching, Chih-Liang Wang, and Hsiu-Lan Wang. "Pathogenetic and Clinical Study of Bronchiolitis," Chung-Hua I-Hsueh Tsa-Chih 12:731-73:1976.

Foster, Steven and Yue Chongxi. Herbal Emissaries: Bringing Chinese Herbs to the West: A Guide to Gardening, Herbal Wisdom, and Well-being, 1992.

Li, Shi Zhen. Ben Cao or Pen Ts'ao, 1578.

Morrissey, Colm, Jasmin Bektic, Barbara Spengler, David Galvin, Volker Christoffel, Helmut Klocker, John M. Fitzpatrick, R. William and G. Watson. "Phytoestrogens Derived from Belamcanda chinensis Have an Antiproliferative Effect on Prostate Cancer Cells in Vitro," The Journal of Urology 172:2426-2433:2004.

Seki, Katsura, Kazuo Haga and Ryohei Kaneko "Belamcandones A-D, dioxotetrahydrodibenzofurans from Belamcanda chinensis," Phytochemistry 38:703-709:1995.

Stuart, George Arthur. Chinese Materia Medica, 1911, reprinted by Gordon Press, 1977.

Wang, Qing Li, Mao Lin and Geng Tao Liu. "Antioxidative Activity of Natural Isorhapontigenin," The Japanese Journal of Pharmacology 87:61-66:2001.

Zhou, Lin Xin and Mao Lin. "Studies on the Preparation of Bioactive Oligomerstilbene by Oxidative Coupling Reaction (1)-Preparation of Shegansu B using Silver Oxide as Oxidant," Chinese Chemical Letters 11:515-516:2000.

Photograph: Blackberry lily seeds, 11 October 2009.