Hu Ye

Hu Ye

　　The leaves of the Hu Ye tree. The Hu Ye tree grows in the Zhongtiao Mountain area and is a deciduous shrub. Its leaves are about seven or eight inches long and five or six inches wide, oblong in shape with rounded serrated edges. In the past, local people used them as steaming cloths for baking bread. Hu Ye leaves can also be used to raise silkworms. Some have experimented with releasing oak silkworms in the Hu Ye forests of Zhongtiao Mountain to harvest cocoons, yielding quite good economic returns.

　　　　Hu Ye is an excellent green packaging material for food — beneficial to human health and pollution-free to the environment. In recent years, large quantities of Hu Ye leaves have been purchased from the eastern mountainous areas of Pinglu and exported to Japan for use as food packaging material.