paeonia_suffruticosa

Paeonia suffruticosa Andr.- Paeoniaceae
牡丹 mu dan (chin.), moutan, tree peony, Baum-Pfingstrose, Strauch-Pfingstrose

Shrub, up to 1.5m tall, native to China, cultivated elsewhere; stem brown-gray; proximal leaves 2-ternate, leaflets long ovate or ovate; terminal leaflets deeply 3-lobed, lobes again 2- or 3-lobed.
flowers single, petals white or pale red-purple (subsp. yinpingmudan)
flowers double, petals white, pink, red, or red-purple (subsp. suffruticosa) - cultivated
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200008041

The root bark of P.suffruticosa (moutan cortex) is a famous traditional Chinese medicine and has been used as an analgesic, sedative and antiinflammatory agent, and as a remedy for cardiovascular, extravasated blood, stagnated blood and female genital diseases. It contains characteristic monoterpene glycosides (mudanpiosides).
[Monoterpene glycosides from Paeonia suffruticosa, Hang-Ching Lin, Hsiou-Yu Ding, Tian-Shung Wu, Pei-Lin Wu, Phytochemistry, Vol.41(1), 1996, 237-242]
[Glycosides from Paeonia suffruticosa. Ding, H. Y., Wu, Y. C., Lin, H. C., Chan, Y. Y., Wu, P. L., Wu, T. S., Chem. Pharm. Bull. (Tokyo), Vol.47(5), 1999, 652-655] http://cpb.pharm.or.jp/cpb/199905/C05_0652.pdf

Moutan cortex contains the antimutagenic paeonol.
[Paeonol: a bio-antimutagen isolated from a crude drug, Moutan cortex. Fukuhara, Y., Yoshida, D., Agricultural and biological chemistry, Vol.51(5), 1987, 1441-1442]

„Paeonol (2′-hydroxy-4′-methoxyacetophenone), the main active compound of the radix of Paeonia suffruticosa, has been reported to inhibit platelet aggregation, thromboxane A2 (Hirai et al., 1983) and free radical formation (Zhang et al., 1999). Accordingly, paeonol may be a potential therapeutic agent for treating inflammation-associated conditions, such as inflammatory pain… the mechanisms by which paeonol exerts its anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects in this inflammatory model may be associated with decreased production of proinflammatory cytokines, NO and PGE2 and increased production of IL-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine, in carrageenan-injected rat paws. In addition, attenuation of the elevated iNOS and COX-2 protein expression as well as neutrophil infiltration in carrageenan-injected paws may also be involved in the beneficial effects of paeonol.“
[Chou, Tz‐Chong. „Anti‐inflammatory and analgesic effects of paeonol in carrageenan‐evoked thermal hyperalgesia.“ British journal of pharmacology 139.6 (2003): 1146-1152] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1573952/

Paeonia suffruticosa Andrews var. lacera as Paeonia moutan Sims var. lacera
Edwards’s Botanical Register, vol.21, t.1771 (1836) [S.A. Drake]
http://plantgenera.org/species.php?id_species=737989