Ophiocordycipitaceae
Ophiocordyceps sinensis
Cordyceps · Yartsa gunbu · Dong chong xia cao · Caterpillar fungus
- Kingdom
- Fungi — not a plant
- Part used
- whole
- Native range
- Alpine meadow of the Tibetan plateau and the Himalaya, above about 3,500 metres
- Morphology
- A fungus that infects the larva of a ghost moth, kills it, mummifies it, and produces a slender dark fruiting body from the caterpillar’s head. What is sold is the whole thing — insect and fungus together.
- Also known as
- Cordyceps sinensis
What is in it
Evidence
Very little adequate controlled evidence. Most commercial products are not this species at all but a cultivated mycelium of Paecilomyces hepiali or Cordyceps militaris, which is a different organism with different chemistry.
Safety
Little characterised in the true species because so little of the trade is the true species. Cultivated substitutes are generally well tolerated. Immunomodulatory effects raise theoretical concerns with immunosuppressants.
Interactions: Theoretical opposition to immunosuppressants; Possible additive with anticoagulants
Regulatory: Permitted as a listed ingredient. Trade in wild material is regulated in China, Nepal and Bhutan.
How the traditions classify it
Three systems, rating the same plant. Where they disagree, none of them is correcting the others — they are separate frameworks that arrived at their categories independently.
Historical use
Used in Tibetan and Chinese medicine, with the Chinese and Tibetan names both meaning winter worm, summer grass. Its modern prominence dates partly from 1993, when Chinese distance runners broke world records and their coach credited a cordyceps tonic.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.
Worth knowing
Yartsa gunbu is among the most valuable biological commodities on earth. Top-grade wild material has sold for more than its weight in gold, and collection is the largest source of cash income for a great many households across the Tibetan plateau — hundreds of thousands of people move to the high meadows each spring for a harvest lasting a few weeks.
It is also collapsing. Yields have fallen sharply, the IUCN assesses the species as Vulnerable, and research points at both over-collection and warming: the fungus needs cold alpine conditions and the suitable zone is moving uphill and shrinking. Violent disputes over collecting rights have killed people.
And most of what is sold is not it. Genuine wild Ophiocordyceps sinensis cannot supply the market, so commercial "cordyceps" is generally cultivated mycelium of an entirely different fungus — which means both the trial literature and the supplement shelf are largely about something other than the thing whose reputation they trade on.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.