Can I eat the bayberry on the roadside?

Every city plants some trees on both sides of the road. These trees not only absorb dust in the air, but also serve as a green isolation belt, beautifying the environment. The roadside bayberry tree is one of them. In the season when bayberries are ripe, the roadside bayberry trees also bear bayberries. Some people choose to pick bayberries from the roadside to eat. This is an inappropriate practice because the bayberries on the roadside have not been processed.

In fact, the bayberry trees on both sides of the road are landscape trees, for people to appreciate only. The bayberry trees used for landscape purposes are different from the bayberry trees planted on the mountains and in greenhouses. The fruits they bear are often small and sour, and have low edible value. In addition, as public greening, they have long been polluted by automobile exhaust and dust. Moreover, gardens often spray pesticides on a regular basis. In addition, the flesh of bayberry is exposed and the surface particles are uneven, which makes it easy for dirt to hide. The pesticide residues seriously exceed the standard, which is extremely harmful to your health. Please do not eat them.

Bayberry tree, formerly known as bayberry, alias: mountain bayberry, vermilion, Zhurong, Latin name: Myrica rubra (Lour.) S. et Zucc. It is an evergreen tree of the Myricaceae family and the genus Bayberry. The bark is gray and shallowly cracked longitudinally when old; the crown is spherical. The twigs and buds are glabrous, and the lenticels are usually few and inconspicuous, and when young and tender, they are only covered with round and shield-shaped glands. The leaves are leathery, glabrous, fall off after 2 years, and are often densely distributed on the upper part of the twigs; they prefer acidic soil. Originated in most parts of China, it grows on hillsides or in valley forests at an altitude of 125-1500 meters. Bayberry is a famous fruit in the south of my country. The bark is rich in tannins and can be used as a reddish-brown dye and astringent in medicine.

[Functions and indications] Anti-inflammatory, astringent, antidiarrheal, bleeding, analgesic, treatment of dysentery, enteritis, metrorrhagia, stomachache.

① "Yunnan Chinese Herbal Medicine": "The bark is anti-inflammatory and hemostatic, astringent and antidiarrheal. It can treat uterine bleeding, dysentery, stomach pain, and gastric ulcer."

② "Selected Chinese Herbal Medicines in Simao, Yunnan": "The root bark can reduce swelling, relieve blood stasis, relieve pain, kill insects and astringe. It can treat dysentery, enteritis, lumbar muscle strain, sprains, eczema, baldness sores and chronic sores."