[Studies on the medicinal plant in the "Sambutsu-cho" of Higo Province possessed by the Kumamoto Clas (I): on the medicinal trees].

The Sambutsu-cho, a list of the natural products of the Kumamoto clan in Higo Province was dedicated to the Tokugawa shogunate in 1735. This book had many names of the plants, animals and minerals. In the plant kingdom, there were many names, wild and cultivated, of cereals, vegetables, fruits, trees, bamboos, herbs, seaweeds and mushrooms. In this report, I studied the species of the trees which were listed up by the Chinese names, Japanese standard and local names. I identified them and found 109 species. Among them, 67 species were medicinal plants. For example, the names of the crude drugs such as Gardeniae fructus, forsythiae fructus and phellodendri radix were found. The ratio of the medicinal plants was 61%.