Gyalrong
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| Gyalrong | |
|---|---|
| 嘉绒 (Jiāróng); Chiarung | |
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Hierarchy | |
| Growing Region | Kham |
| Geography | |
| Country | China |
| Province/State | Sichuan |
| Prefectures | Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture |
| Coordinates | 30.88, 101.89 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 21,300 km² |
| Terrain | Valleys of the Da Jinchuan and Xiao Jinchuan, the headwaters of the Dadu, in Danba County (Garzê) and the counties of Jinchuan, Xiaojin and Barkam (Ngawa); approximately those units. Ground above 4,000 m and bare ground are left out |
| Growing history | |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 0 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Gyalrong (嘉绒, Jiāróng) is a cannabis growing area in the valleys of the Ta-chin and Hsiao-chin rivers (the Da Jinchuan and Xiao Jinchuan) in western Sichuan, China, drawn on Danba County in Garzê and the counties of Jinchuan, Xiaojin and Barkam in Ngawa. It is part of the Kham growing region. Its people are the Gyalrong Tibetans, whom Ernest Henry Wilson called the "Chiarung" and counted in eighteen tribes.[1]: 161–162 Alexander Hosie in 1904 and Wilson in 1908 saw hemp in the valleys, which both called Cannabis.[2]: 59[1]: 185 A seed lot collected at Xiaojin in 2020 is one of twenty hemp landraces studied by Li and colleagues.[3]
Hemp in the valley farms
Isabella Bird, who published under the name Mrs J. F. Bishop, wrote in 1899 that the people she calls the "Man-tze" of the Somo territory grew "wheat, barley, oats, maize, buckwheat, lentils, and a little hemp". They dressed in woollen cloth they spun, wove and dyed themselves, "sewn with their own hempen fibre".[4]: 450
Hosie, the British consul-general at Chengtu, came north from Ta-chien-lu towards Romi Chango in October 1904. In the valley below Mao-niu, where the farmers were mostly Chinese and poor, the crops on the ground on 14 October were patches of maize, amaranth, buckwheat, "hemp (Cannabis sativa, L.)" and tobacco.[2]: 59 Two days later, in the valley of the Hsiao-chin east of Romi Chango, the white-washed Tibetan villages of Pien-ku and Yo-tsa grew maize, amaranth and "plots of tobacco and hemp".[2]: 63 Near Sheng-ko-tsung, the next day, the valley floor held patches of maize, buckwheat, amaranth, millet, hemp and beans.[2]: 63–64 East of the range, below Wo-lung-kuan on the way down to Kuan Hsien, maize had been harvested by 24 October but amaranth, beans and hemp were still standing.[2]: 71
Wilson took the same road in the summer of 1908, from Kuan Hsien by way of Monkong Ting to Romi Chango and Ta-chien-lu.[1]: 169 At Kuan-chai, the village of the Wokje chieftain at about 2,600 m (8,500 feet), wheat was the main crop, with maize and potatoes; "A little flax and Hemp (Cannabis) also occur, the oil expressed from the seeds of these plants being in general use as an illuminant."[1]: 185 Wilson names Somo, Damba and Wokje among the more important of the Chiarung tribes.[1]: 162
A landrace from Xiaojin
In 2020 twenty landraces of hemp achenes were collected from nine provinces of China and stored at the National Gene Bank of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Li and colleagues analysed their chemistry; in their table the origin of one of them, CZ22, is Xiaojin, in Aba (Ngawa). Its achenes are small and light-coloured, about 5.2 mm long and 4.2 mm wide, with a thousand-grain weight of 17.7 g.[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
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Wilson, Ernest Henry (1913). A Naturalist in Western China, with Vasculum, Camera, and Gun. Vol. I. London: Methuen.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Hosie, Alexander (1905). Report by Mr. A. Hosie, His Majesty's Consul-General at Chengtu, on a Journey to the Eastern Frontier of Thibet (Report). London: His Majesty's Stationery Office. Cd. 2586.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Li, Jun; Wang, Sijia; Wan, Huihua; He, Ruikun; Li, Zhen; An, Ruofan; Yue, Zhongbao; Mi, Yaolei; Chen, Weiqiang; Cao, Xue; Wang, Sifan; Xu, Zhichao; Zhu, Lingjuan; Ma, Wei; Chen, Shilin; Sun, Wei; Yang, Wei (2026). "Metabolomic diversity and spatial localization of bioactive compounds in hemp achenes from diverse landraces". Journal of Pharmaceutical Analysis. 16 (9) 101545. doi:10.1016/j.jpha.2025.101545. PMC 13571719.
- ↑ Bishop, Isabella L. (1899). The Yangtze Valley and Beyond: An Account of Journeys in China, Chiefly in the Province of Sze Chuan and among the Man-tze of the Somo Territory. London: John Murray.