ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, Philipp Franz Balthazar von Siebold, a German doctor who lived in Japan and taught modern Western medicine in Nagasaki, was fond of a Japanese tree that produced attractive owers in early spring and was found all over the country. He subsequently described this tree as Prunus mume Siebold et Zuccarini (known as ume in Japanese) in his textbook Flora Japonica (Figure 2.1). In Japanese society, ume has been used as food as well as a supplement. Because fresh ume plums have a high cyanide content, they cannot be eaten directly, and instead the fruit have been traditionally pickled.
