Luo Han Guo or Momordica Grosvenori and Its Derivatives.Momordica Grosvenori Extract.

History and Botanical Description.

Cyanotis arachnoides Extract Beta-Ecdysterone INCI Name CYANOTIS ARACHNOIDEA EXTRACT CAS Beta-Ecdysterone 5289-74-7 Cyanotis Arachnoidea Extract Ecdysterone 20-Hydroxyecdysone Commisterone Crustecdyson Ecdysteron Isoinokosterone Polypodine A Viticosterone photo picture image Luo Han plants with flowers and developing fruit in early spring.Typically all flowers are hand pollinated. Plants can remain productive for up to 8 years. Mature Luo Han fruit just prior to harvest in late autumn.

Luo Han Guo is a perennial vine,cultivated in northern Guangxi of China. Its dried fruits are ellipse or round, with brown or snuff surface and abundant small pale and black hairs. People have used it for centuries for both its sweet flavor and its medicinal property in China. After processed, it can be used as a remedy for colds and congestion of the lung. Nowadays Luo Han Guo is used as a low calorie-sweetening agent in juices or drinks, or it can be made into a desirable beverage itself.

As appears from the above enumeration of the known material, Momordica Grosvenori is known from three rather widely separated regions in southwestern China:

(1).the mountains westward from Guilin in the northeastern part of the province of Kwangsi, where it is intensively cultivated in several districts at altitudes of 600 meters and over (found growing wild at 1570 meters);

(2).about 600-700 kilometers northeast of Guilin in the north-central portion of Jiangxi Province in Chung-jen district southwest of Yang-po lake, at altitudes of 300-700 meters;

(3).about 700 kilometers south of Guilin in two districts of Hainan Island at altitudes of 610 meters or over. In Kwangsi province it grows in the mountains in shady forests where Cunninghamia lanceolata, the tea-oil tree, Thea sasanqua, and the wood-oil tree Aleurites Fordii are native. In these foothill mountain forests, rains and fogs are frequent in the summer season. "Lo han kuo" tubers transplanted by Groff from Guilin to Canton near sea level gave rise to vigorous vines but did not flower.

Four principal varieties of the "lo han kuo" are grown in the Miao-tze country, where they are propagated by dividing the tuberous roots. These varieties show rather striking differences in the shape and color of the fruit and in the shape and size of the leaves, and also in the degree of evenness of the leaf-margins. In some varieties a very few hydathodes can sometimes be detected along the leaf margins, but more often they are wanting entirely. Nothing is known as to the fruit characters of the wild plants of Momordica Grosvenari. The leaves of the Jiangxi province plant (Y. Tsiang 10200) are the largest known, reaching 23 cm. in length and 13 cm. in width. Those of the Hainan Island plant (S.K. Lau 1925) are the smallest, 6.5-8 by 3.5-5 cm. Male plants are not cultivated by the Miao-tze people and for this reason are seldom seen. Flowers collected from the wild plants growing in the mountains are used by the Miao-tze people to pollinate the cultivated female plants.

The "lo han kuo" is a small gourd-like fruit having an intensely sweet taste, widely used by the South Chinese as a household remedy for colds, sore-throat, and minor stomach and intestinal troubles. From the studies of Prof. Groff and his Chinese assistants, it appears that about 1000 tons of the green fruits are delivered every year to the drying sheds at Guilin. The fruits lose much weight in drying and are then packed in boxes and shipped to Canton where most of the crop is consumed, but large numbers of the "lo han" fruits are exported to the Cantonese living in the United States and other over-sea countries.