Snakegourd Root

Primarily produced in the Chinese provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shaanxi, Shanxi.

Irregular cylindrical, fusiform, or petal-like lumps, 8~16cm long, 1.5~5.5cm diameter. Externally yellowish-white or pale brownish-yellow, with longitudinal wrinkles, thin root scars and slightly indented horizontal long lenticels, sometimes with remnants of yellowish-brown outer skin. Firm texture, fractured surface is white or pale yellow, powdery, horizontal cut surface has yellow xylem, ‘veins’ slightly arranged in radial pattern, longitudinal cut surface has yellow longitudinal linear xylem. faint odor, slightly bitter taste.

Superior medicinal material is fat and large, white, firm, powdery and with lack of ‘veins” on fractured surface.

Sweet, slightly bitter, slightly cold

Clears heat, drains fire, engenders fluid, stops thirst, expels pus, eliminates swelling. Apply to thirst due to heat, diabetes, jaundice, hemoptysis due to dryness of lung, swelling abscess, hemorrhoid fistula. As for apply to diabetes, often combined with medicinal material, which can nourish yin, to achieve the effect.

'Veins’: This refers to fiber bundles or vascular bundles in the medicinal material. After the medicinal material is broken, its fiber bundles or vascular bundles present as uneven filaments that look similar to the tendons and vessels of the human body, thus they are called veins. When they appear in an orderly arrangement on the cut surface of the medicinal material, little dotted marks can be seen that are called ‘vein dots’. Relatively large marks from vascular bundles are also called ‘vein striations’.