Lotus belongs to the water lily family, scientific name NELUMBONUCIFERA. perennial aquatic herb. Sex like warm and moist. Native to India, in central and southern China, shallow water ponds planted more.
Lotus is a favorite flower, also known as lotus, infinite. "Er Ya, Release Grass": "Lotus, lotus flower ...... is actually a lotus." Summer flowers, light red or white, single or heavy petals, to a hundred petals, a thousand petals. In addition to flowers and leaves can be appreciated. The whole body is useful.
Lotus seed, the mature seed. For food. In Chinese medicine, it can be used as medicine. It is flat, sweet and astringent in nature, and functions to tonify the spleen and nourish the heart. Lotus seed to Xianglian best. Lotus seed stamen, is the lotus seed center green stamen. Containing lotus heart alkaloids, iso-lotus alkaloids and other alkaloids, as well as a variety of flavonoids such as lignoceroside, function of clearing heat and diarrhea. Lotus beard, for the stamen of the lotus flower. Lotus leaves, in addition to appreciation, fresh for medicinal purposes, clearing summer heat, summer days for the boiled winter melon soup with spices. Can also be used as a package of lotus leaf rice. Dry can also be used for medicinal purposes, commonly used more is wrapped steamed dumplings. Lotus root, is the lotus of the fat rhizome, by the apex of the lotus whip expanded and become, across the soil with the outer skin is yellow-brown, meat fat, white, slightly sweet and brittle texture. Lotus root because of the quality of planting different and different tastes. Chinese medical books, often eaten can make people happy. Lotus root nodules, which are the knots of the root stem, are one of the medicinal drugs in Chinese medicine. There is also lotus root powder, one of the quick drinks in summer, which quenches summer heat and thirst, moistens the lungs and nourishes the skin. To the West Lake produced the most famous.
The scientific name of the lotus is Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn, lotus belongs to the water lily family (Nymphaeaceae) lotus genus (Nelumbo).
Lotus (Nelumbo Adans.) plants is one of the earliest origin of angiosperms. According to ancient botanists study of fossils confirmed that one hundred and thirty-five million years ago, in the northern hemisphere, many waters are distributed in the lotus plant. At that time, it was planted in the late stage of the sharp decline of giant reptiles dinosaurs, and it grew on the Earth much earlier than the appearance of human ancestors (2 million years ago). According to A.H. Christopherovich, Paleobotany (1965) of the former Soviet Union, fossils of the genus Lotus were found in the Cretaceous of the Arctic region of North America and the Amur river stream (i.e., the Heilongjiang River) in Asia, and in the Oligocene and Miocene strata of Europe and East Asia (the Kuril Islands), and Japan. In those years, the temperature on earth was warmer than now, and there were about 10~12 species of lotus plants, which were distributed in all five continents. With the onset of the Ice Age, global temperatures dropped, causing many plants to become extinct and others to be forced to migrate, completely destroying their original geographic distribution. As a result of this catastrophe, two species of Lotus survived, and their distribution was reduced. Distributed in Asia, northern Oceania for the Chinese lotus (Nelumbo nucifera), drifted to North America for the American lotus (N. lutea) paleobotanists have also pointed out that in Japan, Hokkaido, Kyoto, excavated the Pleistocene to Holocene (2 million years ago) lotus fossils, and the modern Chinese lotus; in the Qaidam Basin of China to excavate 10 million years ago lotus fossils, and modern Chinese lotus. In the 1970s, the Petroleum Exploration and Development Planning Research Institute of the Ministry of Petroleum and Chemical Industry of China and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a book entitled "Early Tertiary Spore Pollen of Bohai Coastal Areas", which recorded that two kinds of fossilized lotus spore pollen had been found in Panshan of Liaoning Province, Beidagang of Tianjin, Kengli and Guangrao of Shandong Province, as well as Cangzhou of Hebei Province, and other places. Tertiary tropical phytogeographical region of China's Hainan Island, Qiongshan Changchang Basin strata, also found in the fossils of the lotus plant. Now China's Heilongjiang Province, Fuyuan, Hulin, Tongjiang, Shangzhi and other counties of the lake and marsh, there are still primitive wild lotus distribution. The above shows that the lotus is an ancient plant before the ice age, it and the sequoia (melasequoiagly plostroboides), ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), Chinese tulip tree (Liriodendron chinese), North American redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), etc., belong to the same glaciers were not eaten by the ice age. The plant is not swallowed by the glacier during the ice age, but survived as a representative of the relict plants.