Subject: Re: Astragulus

From: [email-masked] ("K N and P J Harris")
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 20:42:11 GMT

Hi 
Funny thing about Astragalus. Much prized in Chinese herbalism, no 
obvious reasons - but -two recent items might make you think. (1) Many 
chinese soils are very low in Selenium.(Se). Astragulus is reputed to be 
a Selenium accumulator. So what ! (2) recently found that we have a very 
small essential requirement for Selenium. Just like we have for Iron, 
Magnesium, Cobalt, Copper, Zinc and quite a bit of the periodic table.
As a Soil Scientist (there are such things) I find this fascinating. 
Soils vary enormously over quite a small distance, which could explain 
one of the problems of herbal remedies which is the apparent 
irregularity of their effectiveness. If you put together the variations 
in plants, the variations in people AND THE VARIABILITY IN SOILS you 
have a scenario for an awful lot of variability.
Good luck with your end - we are trying to sort out the soil 
variability.
Peter Harris,
Dept of Soil Science, University of Reading, UK.
AKA <[email-masked]>