Luo Han Guo, a perennial herbaceous vine, is known as the “Oriental Magic Fruit” and “Good Medicine Fruit”.
It is native to tropical and subtropical mountainous areas in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and other provinces in China. Later, Luo Han Guo produced in Guilin, Guangxi became the most famous.
The root has a fat tuber, spindle-shaped or nearly spherical. The stem is slightly sturdy and has ridges. The petiole is 3-10cm long, covered with the same hairs and glandular scales as the branches; the leaf blade is membranous, ovate-cordate, triangular-ovate or broadly ovate-cordate, with acuminate or long acuminate tips and wavy edges. It has small teeth due to the extension of small veins, with marginal hairs, thin pedicels, calyx tube bracelet-shaped, and often has 3 oblong membranous scales at the throat. The calyx has 5 lobes, triangular, with a subulate tail tip at the tip, 3 veins, moreover，the veins are slightly raised. The corolla is yellow and covered with black glandular dots. Lobes 5. oblong, often with 5 veins, 5 stamens, inserted near the base of the tube, two bases close together, and one separated, filament base swollen; 5 degenerate stamens, ovary oblong, densely covered with yellow-brown hairs, thin pericarp, brittle after drying. Seeds numerous, light yellow, nearly round or broadly ovate, flattened, obtuse at the base, slightly narrowed at the tip, concave in the middle of both sides, surrounded by radial grooves, wavy edges, dark red-brown when young, and white when ripe.
Flowering period February-May, fruiting period July-September.
The fruit contains non-sugar sweet ingredients, mainly triterpenoid glycosides: mogroside V and IV, the sweetness of glycoside V is 256-344 times that of sucrose, and the sweetness of glycoside IV is 126 times that of sucrose. It also contains a large amount of glucose, and fructose accounts for 14%. It also contains 26 inorganic elements such as manganese, iron, nickel, selenium, tin, iodine, molybdenum, protein, vitamin C, etc.
The kernel contains 41.07% oil, of which the fatty acids are: linoleic acid, oleic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, palmitoleic acid, myristic acid, lauric acid, decanoic acid.