Common Vurculigo Rhizome

Primarily produced in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Sichuan.

Cylindrical, slightly curved, two ends are flat, 3~10cm long, 3~8mm diameter. Externally brown or black-brown, rough, wrinkled and uneven, with thin and dense discontinuous horizontal lines, and scattered faint small spotted lenticels. Remnants of root pieces have thin ends and thick middle rootlets grow thickly at one end of the rhizome, 3~6cm long, with extremely dense ringed horizontal lines, light and loose texture, soft but hard to break. Rhizome is firm and brittle, easily broken, flat fractured surface, slightly granular (steamed pieces are slightly transparent and horn-like), cortex is pale grayish-brown or reddish-brown due to gelatinization, relatively dark near the center. Slightly acrid odor, slightly bitter and acrid taste.

Superior medicinal material has thick and long strip, firm texture, black-brown externally.

Acrid, hot, toxic

Warms kidney yang, strengthens sinew and bone. Apply to impotence and cold sperm, aconuresis, metrorrhagia and metrostaxis, heart and abdomen cold pain, waist and feet cold impediment, ulcer, scrofula, cold diarrhea caused by yang deficiency. Impotence and cold sperm, wind-cold of waist and knees, flaccidity of extremities.