Compare the microscopic characteristics of stems of the 24 Dendrobium species utilized in the traditional Chinese medicine “Shihu”

Abstract

Shihu is a famous Chinese Materia Medica derived from species of the Dendrobium. In order to differentiate 24 Dendrobium species, microscopic features of the 24 Dendrobium species were systemically observed, including the trend of vascular bundle number with different internodes and the transverse section characteristics of stem. The results indicate that the thickness of cuticle, the level of thickening of epidermal cells and cell types, the number of vascular bundles, the shape of vascular bundle sheath, the type and distribution of calcium oxalate crystals, the presence or absence of silica masses can be used to authenticate the 24 Dendrobium species. In addition, the number of vascular bundles in stems of 24 Dendrobium species also have changed at different internodes, and showed a trend of first increasing and then decreasing. For some specific species, the vascular bundle numbers had typical differences, which can provide some support for the identification of Dendrobium plants. Thus, using the multiple microscopic characteristics of stems can identify the Dendrobium plants effectively and quickly.

Microscopic characterization of five Artemisia crude herbs using light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and microscopic quantitative analysis

“…The cut parts were fixed in FAA solution (70% ethanol: formaldehyde: acetic acid [90:5:5]) for 24 h. The samples were dehydrated using a gradient series of ethanol and embedded in paraffin. A rotary microtome (Leica RM2265, Leica Microsystems, Nussloch, Germany) was used to produce 10 μm‐thick sections (Zhao et al, 2018). The paraffin sections were stained with safranin and fast green.…”

“…It has strong reproducibility and objectivity, and overcomes the influence of human factors in microscopic analysis. Zhao et al observed the number of vascular bundles in the stems of 24 Dendrobium species by means of microscopic quantitative analysis, which aided the identification of Dendrobium plants (Zhao et al, 2018). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has significant advantages in analyzing the appearance, size, and fine structure, and visually observe the characteristics of population tissues (Khan et al, 2019; Zha et al, 2019), especially in the microscopic identification of leaf samples (Muravnik & Shavarda, 2012; Rosa et al, 2021).…”

Qualitative classification of Dendrobium huoshanense (Feng dou) using fast non-destructive hand-held near infrared spectroscopy

“…The macroscopic and microscopic characteristics of different grades of D. huoshanense are very similar, so it is difficult to distinguish their grades. The classification methods of D. huoshanense include morphological species classification, 11 microscopic characteristics analysis, 12 gas chromatography (GC), 13 high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) 14 and DNA analysis. 15 Those methods, however, suffer from sophisticated pretreatment, time-consuming methods, high cost, destructive procedures, reagent, and solvent consumption and chemical waste-production.…”

Development, Identification, and Application of a Germplasm Specific SCAR Marker for Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo

“…Initially, morphological (Wahba et al, 2014;Moudi and Go, 2017), microscopic (Zhao et al, 2017(Zhao et al, , 2018, or chemical analyses (Luo et al, 2013;Ye et al, 2017) were utilized for herb identification; however, in the majority of cases, these analyses are inadequate to correctly identify plant species (Teixeira da Silva et al, 2016;Kumar et al, 2018). Moreover, these morphological, microscopic, and chemical indicators are easily affected by environmental factors.…”