Araliaceae
Panax notoginseng
San qi · Tian qi · Notoginseng
- Part used
- root
- Native range
- Southern China, chiefly Yunnan and Guangxi
- Morphology
- A shade-grown perennial to about seventy centimetres with whorled compound leaves and a cluster of red berries, over a hard knobbly root. Grown under lath houses and takes several years to mature.
What is in it
Evidence
Little independent controlled evidence. Yunnan Baiyao has a substantial domestic use record as a haemostatic and some veterinary evidence, and its full formula remains a protected state secret in China.
Safety
Dencichine, its haemostatic constituent, is a neurotoxic amino acid related to the compound responsible for lathyrism. Effects on coagulation cut both ways and are poorly characterised. The undisclosed composition of the best-known preparation makes interaction assessment impossible.
Interactions: Unpredictable effects on coagulation; caution with anticoagulants and before surgery
Regulatory: Permitted as a listed medicine ingredient in Australia. Yunnan Baiyao is widely sold; its full composition is not disclosed.
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
Recorded relatively late, in the sixteenth century, and described by Li Shizhen in the Bencao Gangmu as more valuable than gold. The principal ingredient of Yunnan Baiyao, a proprietary haemostatic formula issued to Chinese and Vietnamese troops.
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
Yunnan Baiyao is the most widely used proprietary herbal formula in the world whose composition nobody outside the manufacturer knows. It is a Chinese state secret, legally protected, and it is sold in pharmacies internationally and used by veterinarians.
That is a genuine problem rather than a curiosity. A preparation of undisclosed composition cannot be checked for interactions, cannot be assessed for contraindications, and cannot be matched to an adverse event. Every principle in this section about knowing what is in the bottle fails at the first step.
Its main ingredient is not in doubt, and dencichine is chemically close to the toxin behind lathyrism — the paralysis caused by over-reliance on grass pea in famine.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.