Collected Illustrations of the Three Realms: Volume on Plants and Trees

Chinese Toon and Tree of Heaven

The Chinese Toon original: 椿 (chun); Toona sinensis and the Tree of Heaven original: 樗 (chu); Ailanthus altissima.

The leaves of the Chinese Toon have a bitter taste and are toxic. They are primarily used as a medicinal wash for scabies, sores, and wind-ulcers original: 風疽 (fengju); a traditional term for skin eruptions or necrotic sores believed to be caused by "pathogenic wind". To use them, one should boil the leaves in water and apply the resulting juice.

The bark is primarily used to treat deafness. Regarding the Tree of Heaven, its roots and leaves are considered especially effective for medicinal purposes. The physical forms and trunks of these two trees are, for the most part, very similar to each other.

However, the Chinese Toon is solid and fragrant, and its young shoots are edible. In contrast, the Tree of Heaven is porous and coarse with a foul odor. People of the North refer to the Tree of Heaven as the "Mountain Toon," while those in the Jiangdong region literally "East of the River," referring to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River call it "Ghost Eyes."

This name is derived from the fact that where the leaves detach from the branch, the remaining scars resemble chupu chupu (chūpú): an ancient Chinese board game; the "seeds" or dice used in the game were often made of wood and shaped like almonds seeds or human eyes.

The Erya the oldest surviving Chinese dictionary, dating back to at least the 3rd century BCE states that the Kao a species of evergreen tree, likely Castanopsis or Mallotus is the "Mountain Chu." In his commentary, Guo Pu a famous scholar and naturalist of the Jin Dynasty (276–324 AD) notes that the Kao resembles the Tree of Heaven, but its color is a pale white and it grows deep in the mountains, hence its name. It also bears a resemblance to the lacquer tree.