Chaozhou Wampee

Chaozhou Wampee

　　Wampee fruit, also known as "wampee," "yellow loquat," "yellow bullet," or "king's fruit." The fruit is golden yellow in color, glossy and eye-catching. Based on taste, it can be divided into sweet and sour varieties. Some types are pleasantly sweet and tangy, juicy, and fragrant, making them an excellent fruit in terms of color, aroma, and taste, comparable to lychee. Its leaves, root bark, and seeds are all used medicinally. A folk saying goes: "Eat lychee when hungry, eat wampee when full," indicating that wampee aids digestion.

　　　　 "The plant appearance, fruit size, and color of wampee are very similar to those of longan. However, the flower structure is quite different because it is a cousin of oranges and pomelos, sharing no blood relation with longan at all. It is an evergreen small tree or large shrub of the Rutaceae family, with pinnate compound leaves. In spring, it blooms with abundant but tiny white flowers arranged in conical panicles, and the fragrance is not particularly noticeable.

　　　　【Properties and Taste】Sweet, sour, warm, slightly bitter, and pungent. Rich in vitamin C, sugar, organic acids, and pectin; the peel and leaves contain volatile oils, while the leaves also have phenols, flavonoid glycosides, and amino acids; the bark contains various alkaloids such as berberine, palmatine, and magnoflorine, as well as sterols, mucilage, and phenolic compounds. The fruit helps with digestion and resolving phlegm, regulates qi, and is used for indigestion, chest congestion and pain, and coughing or wheezing due to phlegm. It can also relieve depression-related heat and soothe hernia pain. The leaves, which are pungent and cool in nature, help dispel wind, relieve exterior symptoms, eliminate phlegm, and regulate qi. They are used to prevent and treat epidemic influenza, fever from warm diseases, coughing and wheezing, abdominal pain from water retention, malaria, difficulty urinating, and toxic sores. The roots can treat qi-related pain and hernia pain.