''Lycium chinense'' is one of two species of

boxthorn ''Lycium'' is a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The genus has a disjunct distribution around the globe, with species occurring on most continents in temperate and subtropical regions. South America has the most ...

shrub in the family Solanaceae. Along with ''

Lycium barbarum ''Lycium barbarum'' is a shrub native to China, with present-day range across Asia and southeast Europe. It is one of two species of boxthorn in the family Solanaceae from which the goji berry or wolfberry is harvested, the other being ''Lycium c ...

'', it produces the goji berry ("wolfberry"). Two varieties are recognized, ''L. chinense'' var. ''chinense'' and ''L. chinense'' var. ''potaninii''. It is also known as Chinese boxthorn, Chinese matrimony-vine, Chinese teaplant, Chinese wolfberry, wolfberry, and Chinese desert-thorn.

Description

Wolfberry species are

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

y shrubs, growing high, somewhat shorter than ''L. barbarum''. The stems are highly branched. Branches are pale gray, slender, curved or pendulous, with thorns long.

Leaves

''Lycium chinense'' leaves form on the shoot either solitary in an alternating arrangement or in bundles of 2 to 4. Their

shape A shape or figure is a graphical representation of an object or its external boundary, outline, or external surface, as opposed to other properties such as color, texture, or material type. A plane shape or plane figure is constrained to lie ...

may be ovate, rombic, lanceolate, or linear-lanceolate, usually long and wide (but up to long and wide in cultivated plants).

Flowers

The flowers grow in groups of one to three in the leaf axils, with

pedicel Pedicle or pedicel may refer to: Human anatomy *Pedicle of vertebral arch, the segment between the transverse process and the vertebral body, and is often used as a radiographic marker and entry point in vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty procedures ...

s long. The bell-shaped or tubular calyx (eventually ruptured by the growing berry) splits halfway into short, triangular, densely ciliate lobes. The corollae is a tube that splits into lavender or light purple petals, wide with five or six lobes longer than the tube, with short hairs at the edge. The

stamens The stamen (plural ''stamina'' or ''stamens'') is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filame ...

are structured with filaments longer than the anthers, slightly shorter or longer than the corolla, with a villous ring slightly above the base and the adjacent corolla tube. The anthers are longitudinally dehiscent.

Fruit and seeds

''Lycium chinense'' produces a bright orange-red berry, whose shape is ovoid or oblong, long and 5 to 8 mm wide (but up to long and wide in cultivation). It contains compressed yellow seeds, from 2.5 to 3 mm wide, with a curved embryo; their number varies widely based on

cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture ...

and fruit size, from 10 to 60. The berries ripen from July to October in the Northern Hemisphere.

Disease

It can be parasitized by the oomycete species '' Peronospora lycii''.

Use

The fruits may be infused with hot water to make goji tea. The plant has been used for centuries in

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of acti ...

for treating various disorders, although there is no high-quality clinical evidence that consuming it has any effect on health or disease.

Chemistry

The fruit composition is similar to that of ''L. barbarum'', with polysaccharides, carotenoids and flavonoids as main constituents.

Rutin Rutin, also called rutoside, quercetin-3-O-rutinoside and sophorin, is the glycoside combining the flavonol quercetin and the disaccharide rutinose (α-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→6)-β-D-glucopyranose). It is a flavonoid found in a wide variety of pl ...

is a prominent flavonoid, while the main carotenoid is

zeaxanthin Zeaxanthin is one of the most common carotenoids in nature, and is used in the xanthophyll cycle. Synthesized in plants and some micro-organisms, it is the pigment that gives paprika (made from bell peppers), corn, saffron, goji ( wolfberries ...

dipalmitate (49% of the carotenoid fraction), with

β-carotene β-Carotene is an organic, strongly coloured red-orange pigment abundant in fungi, plants, and fruits. It is a member of the carotenes, which are terpenoids (isoprenoids), synthesized biochemically from eight isoprene units and thus having 40 ...

, two

cerebroside Cerebrosides is the common name for a group of glycosphingolipids called monoglycosylceramides which are important components in animal muscle and nerve cell membranes. They consist of a ceramide with a single sugar residue at the 1-hydroxyl ...

s, and three pyrrole derivatives as other constituents. Dozens of secondary metabolites have been isolated and identified from the roots, root bark, and leaves, including cyclic peptides,

alkaloid Alkaloids are a class of basic, naturally occurring organic compounds that contain at least one nitrogen atom. This group also includes some related compounds with neutral and even weakly acidic properties. Some synthetic compounds of similar ...

s, and flavonoids.

Citric acid Citric acid is an organic compound with the chemical formula HOC(CO2H)(CH2CO2H)2. It is a colorless weak organic acid. It occurs naturally in citrus fruits. In biochemistry, it is an intermediate in the citric acid cycle, which occurs in ...

is the major nonvolatile organic acid in the leaves followed by oxalic acid.

Gallery

Lycium chinense 14.JPG, Habitus Lycium chinense 2.JPG, Leaves and buds Lycium chinense 11.JPG, Leaves and flower Lycium chinense 12.JPG, Leaves and flower Lycium chinense(siamak sabet) (1).jpg, Berries Lycium chinense MHNT.jpg, Dried berries

References

External links

United States Department of Agriculture
* {{authority control chinense Edible Solanaceae Medicinal plants Dried fruit Herbs Leaf vegetables Plants used in traditional Chinese medicine Geography of Ningxia Taxa named by Philip Miller