Tai'an
More actions
| Tai'an | |
|---|---|
| 泰安 (Tài'ān); Tai'an District | |
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Geography | |
| Country | China |
| Province/State | Shandong |
| Prefecture-level city | Tai'an |
| Coordinates | 36.20, 117.09 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 9,900 km² |
| Terrain | The valley of the Dawen River and the foothills and slopes of Tai Shan in west-central Shandong; approximately the city of Tai'an (Taishan, Daiyue, Xintai, Feicheng, Ningyang and Dongping) with the former city of Laiwu |
| Growing history | |
| Earlier names | Tai'an District; Lai Wu; Fei Cheng |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Tai'an is a hemp growing area of Shandong, China, round the city of Tai'an at the foot of Tai Shan, drawn on the city of Tai'an and the former city of Laiwu. Its fibre hemp is a landrace, known locally as "Lai Wu" or "Fei Cheng" hemp after two of its producing counties.[1]: 61 In the 1970s and early 1980s, by Robert C. Clarke's estimate from interviews with local agriculture officials, the district grew about 65,000 hectares of hemp a year, about 60 per cent of Shandong's hemp ribbon; by 1993 the area had fallen to about 4,000 hectares, most of it in Feicheng and Ningyang.[1]: 62 Escaped and wild cannabis grows on Tai Shan,[1]: 60 and in 2020 a collector of hemp germplasm for the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences said that wild hemp still survives in its valleys.[2]
The landrace
Clarke, who studied the crop in the district for a paper published in 1995, found that the farmers made no special selection for crop improvement; he judged that the landrace had evolved almost entirely by farmers' unconscious selection and by natural factors. The plants are almost all dioecious, moderately branched and 2.5 to 4 metres tall, with medium to dark green leaves of seven to nine leaflets and sparse flowers, and give a low seed yield. Some plants produce resin glands, but they apparently make little if any THC: Clarke concluded that the landrace "cannot be considered a drug variety", and found no local tradition of its use as medicine or inebriant.[1]: 61
Its seed falls into two kinds that grow in the same fields. Local officials call the small, light seed with dark stripes (12 g per 1,000 seeds) 'Lai Wu', and the large brown, marbled seed (26 g per 1,000) 'Fei Cheng'. About 65 per cent of the plants in a field are of the large-seeded kind and 20 per cent of the small-seeded; few hybrids form, because the two flower at very different times. Clarke took both to be segregates of the one landrace, and found them equal in bast content.[1]: 61–62 Farmers saved seed from their own crop each year and brought in no improved seed from elsewhere in China.[1]: 63
Hemp farming
In Clarke's account Shandong produced more than 100,000 tonnes of hemp ribbon a year in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the Tai'an district about 60,000 tonnes of it. Hemp was then grown in several counties of the district where it was no longer grown in the 1990s, and the country round Lai Wu was held to produce the tallest and finest hemp in the province. By 1992 the district produced no more than 10,000 tonnes on less than 10,000 hectares; farmers could earn more from wheat, maize, soy beans, peanuts, fruit and vegetables. Local officials and the mill estimated the area in 1993 at about 5,300 hectares; Clarke's own estimate was nearer 4,000.[1]: 62
The crop was grown mainly on the flat valley land along the Dawen, with very little on the terraced foothills. A spring crop was sown in late March and cut in July, and a summer crop sown in mid-June and cut in late August or early September, both before flowering. Seed was broadcast by hand at 75 kg a hectare. Seed for the next year came from fields sown for it in late May or early June and harvested in mid-October, or from plants along field margins, irrigation ditches and roadsides.[1]: 63 A hemp degumming, spinning and weaving mill was built at Dongping in 1987, and a Chinese and Dutch joint venture invested in it in 1993.[1]: 57 Neither the seed nor its oil was commonly eaten in the district.[1]
Tai Shan
Near the summit of Tai Shan, Clarke found cannabis growing along the paths with increasing frequency, and the mountain top nearly covered in weedy hemp escaped from cultivation. He suggested that this might come from the Taoist custom of offering grain to the Jade Emperor on the summit at the Double Ninth festival, which brings new seed to the mountain. The escaped plants are shorter than the crop (1 to 2 metres), with brown seeds and medium-sized leaves. On the north side of the mountain, away from the pilgrims' paths, he found a different, wild form under a metre tall, with narrow leaflets, tiny dark seeds and a compact, much-branched habit, some with red stems. It grows on the rocky edges of the highest terraced fields, along paths and roads and in the shade of trees, but not as a weed in the fields, where farmers remove it.[1]: 60
In 2020 Qiu Caisheng (邱财生) of the academy's Institute of Bast Fiber Crops, who collects wild hemp germplasm across China, told the Beijing News that wild hemp still survives in the valleys of Tai Shan.[2] A herbarium sheet from Hwei-maling on Tai Shan, Wang 413 (1935), was collected in September 1935.[3]
Appellations
No appellation pages exist for this growing area yet.
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing area yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Clarke, Robert C. (1995). "Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) cultivation in the Tai'an District of Shandong Province, Peoples Republic of China" (PDF). Journal of the International Hemp Association. 2 (2): 57, 60–65 – via Vote Hemp.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 周怀宗; 王颖 (23 November 2020). "制药用的工业大麻 持续火热背后的困境怎么破" [Industrial hemp for pharmaceuticals: the difficulties behind the boom]. 新京报 (in 中文). Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ "Specimen PE 00557943: Cannabis sativa". Chinese Virtual Herbarium. Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 13 October 2026.