Latin Name: Hippophae rhamnoides L.
Family: Elaeagnaceae
Common Names: Sea buckthorn, Siberian pineapple, Sea Berry, Sandthorn or Swallowthorn
Habitat: It is native from northwestern Europe, through central Asia to the Altai Mountains to western and northern China and the northern Himalayas.
Historic Uses: Used in ancient Greece as a fodder for horses to promote weight gain and a shiny coat. In fact, the generic Latin name "Hippophae" literally translates to "shiny horse".
Sea buckthorn has been used for centuries in both Europe and Asia as food; and for its pharmaceutical properties.
Anecdotal reports indicate sea buckthorn was used in ancient times to:
Lower fever, reduce inflammation, counteract toxicity and abscesses, and clean the lungs.
Treat colds and coughs.
Treat tumours and growths, especially of the stomach and the oesophagus.
Current Uses
1. Functional Food
Juice from sea buckthorn berries is a common drink in many parts of Asia and Europe. The juice is very high in protein, vitamins C and E, and organic acids.
The leaves, either fresh or dried, can be steeped to yield a nutritional tea.
The leaves, young branches and fruit pulp can be used as animal fodder.
2. Medicinal
Topical application of sea buckthorn oil has been reported for skin therapy including sun, heat, chemical and radiation burns, eczema and poorly healing wounds. Russian cosmonauts used sea buckthorn cream for protection from cosmic radiation.
Oil from the sea buckthorn fruit is rich in vitamin E, carotenoids, phytosterols and essential fatty acids, all of which have beneficial medicinal properties for the treatment of internal and topical maladies.
3. Agronomic and Environmental
Sea buckthorn is a remarkably hardy bush that rapidly develops an extensive root system capable of fixing nitrogen. Thus, it is suitable for growth on marginal soils, eventually improving them to where they can support the growth of other plants. It is quite tolerant of salt-spray adjacent to highways. Sea buckthorn has been used for:
Soil erosion control and land reclamation projects
Wildlife habitat enhancement (figure 1) and farm stand protection
Ornamental bushes
The sea-buckthorn which widely distributes warm tropics area in the Eurasia is fallen leaf tall bush, belongs to the plant (Hippophae) of sea-buckthorn,.It is one kind of plant that bears the drought, the multi-growths in the Gobi Desert, the high mountains and plains range, the land barren area bush and also can tenaciously grow in the barren area wilderness the survival and in inceasingly multiply.,Because of geographical position and climate and so on ,sea-buckthorn distribute widely and the type are most in our country such as Shanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Gansu, Ningxia, Liaoning,Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou, Xinjiang, Tibet and so on.
The total area amounts to 18 million acres. At the same time, our country is earliest country that use and research sea-buckthorn in the world. Tibetan nationality, Mongol nationality, Uygur national minority use sea-buckthorn for edible and medicinal since the ancient times . The sea-buckthorn richly contains the rich vitamin, amino acid, trace element, fatty acid and yellow ketones, active phenol class and phospholipin .It has the extremely high medicine and the health -care effect.
