A Companion Volume to Medicinal Plants and Mushrooms of Yunnan Province of China

The old saying ＂no prescription can be made without Yunnan medicinal materials＂ suggests the profound heritage and extensive influence of Yunnan’s ethnic medicine culture and medicinal plant resources. This book, A Companion Volume to Medicinal Plants and Mushrooms of Yunnan Province of China, continues the systematical introduction of the plant morphological characteristics, medicinal history, resource situation, traditional uses, ethnopharmacology, phytochemicals, pharmacological effects, biosynthesis, and sustainable utilization of some important or endemic medicinal plants and mushrooms of Yunnan Province of China, including Amomi Fructus, Amomum tsaoko, Angelica sinensis, Aucklandia costus, Gentiana rigescens, Phyllanthus emblica, and Polygonatum kingianu, Tricholoma matsutake, etc. Furthermore, this book offers strategies and advice for sustainable utilization and rational exploitation of medicinal plant resources in Yunnan, drawing on the basis of the author’s years of practice in the field.

• Reviews species-specific natural products discovered from Yunnan medicinal plants, and their bio-activities.
• Provides a brief introduction to the commercial drugs and health products developed based on these medicinal plants.
• Discusses the resource availability and conservation status of these medicinal plants.
• For those threatened species, the causes of their endangerment are summarized and conservation strategies are proposed.
• Enhances understanding with high-quality original photographs and illustrations of the plants, their habitats, and usage in traditional remedies.

Hai-Yang Liu

Dr. Haiyang Liu is a professor at State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Natural Medicines, Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB), Chinese Academy of Sciences. He finished his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Chemistry (1994) at Sichuan University (Chengdu University of Science and Technology). Then, he received his PhD in Medicinal Chemistry in 2005 from Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. After graduation, he worked in the State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Natural Medicines of KIB, CAS and as a visiting scholar at University of Mississippi in 2014. He was promoted to Full Professor (2014). His research interests include: (1) the discovery and mechanisms of novel and bioactive natural products from traditional Chinese medicine and medicinal plants (with emphasis on the genera Paris, Ypsilandra, Chloranthus, etc., and the family Myrtaceae) and the R&D of innovative drugs; (2) the sustainable utilization of medicinal plant resources. He has published more than 150 articles, including those published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Food Chemistry, Organic Letters, European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Natural Products, ect. He also serves as the Editorial Board members of various journals including Food Science and Human Wellness, Fitoterapia, Natural Products and Bioprospecting.

Yunheng Ji

Dr. Yunheng Ji is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Natural Medicines, and the CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. He is an expert in the monocotyledonous families, Asparagaceae and Melanthiaceae, as well as aquatic angiosperms. His research focuses on the evolution, conservation, and sustainable utilization of economically important, endemic, and endangered (＂3E＂) plant taxa, involving in molecular phylogenetics, evolutionary and functional genomics, biogeography, plant taxonomy, and population genetics. He currently serves as the Editorial Board members of journals ＂BMC Plant Biology＂ and ＂Frontiers in Genetics＂. He has authored more than 60 peer reviewed research publications in well reputed scientific journals, and the book entitled ＂A Monograph of Paris (Melanthiaceae)＂ was published by Springer & Nature in 2021.

Xig Fang

Dr. Xing Fang is a professor at State Key Laboratory of Phytochemistry and Natural Medicines, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. By comprehensively utilizing techniques such as molecular biology, biochemistry, and phytochemistry, his research focuses on the study of novel structural active secondary metabolites in plants, using phytochemical methods to discover new structurally active natural products, and employing genomics, transcriptomics, enzymology, and other methods to analyze the biological metabolic pathways and enzymatic mechanisms of highly active metabolites. He has published more than 70 articles, including those published in Nat. Chem. Biol., Nat. Plants, Nat. Commun. PNAS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Mol. Plant, ect.