Common Coltsfoot Flower

Primarily produced in the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan.

Flower bud is rod-like or long elliptical shape, singular or 2~3 in parallel, sometimes has 5 flowers; this is called ‘three linked flowers’. Often 1~3cm long, 0.5~0.8cm diameter. Flower bud and peticel have several layers of pink-purple or pale brown scale-like bracts, which covered with yellowish-brown immature tiny ligulate flowers and tubular flowers similar to purple spider-web. Clear aromatic odor; slightly bitter and acrid taste, cotton-like when chewed.

Superior medicinal material has 2~3 flowers in parallel, large bud, dry body, purple-red color, extremely short pedicel, with no open flowers.

Acrid, slightly bitter; warm

Transforms phlegm, stops cough, downbears qi, moistens the lung, stops vomiting. Apply to cough, panting, tuberculosis, cough with bloody phlegm.

‘Green skin and red lips’: green skin refers to the lower portion of the rod-shape flower head of kuan dong hua, which has an involucres that appears purplish-red with green. Red lips refer to the ligulate and tubular unopened apex of the kuan dong hua flower, which appears pale red; after opening, it changes to yellow. ‘Three linked flowers’: the flower head of kuan dong hua often has 2~3 bases linked together.