Description

Pipewort, “the herb that carries a star”

Gu Jing Cao reads “the herb of the essence of the grain”: it grows in rice fields after the harvest, and it was believed to feed on the Qi left behind in the harvested field. Its first name is lovelier still, Dai Xing Cao, “the herb that carries a star”: its small, round, whitish flower heads, perched at the tips of very fine stalks, look like stars set on threads. It is a small annual of fifteen to twenty centimetres, pipewort (Eriocaulon buergerianum), which likes waterlogged ground; the flower head is harvested in autumn with its stalk, and its reference growing areas are Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

A light herb that rises to the head

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, pipewort is neutral, pungent and sweet in flavour: pungency disperses, sweetness harmonises, and the plant expels without forcing. Its distinctive quality is its lightness: in tradition, what is light goes upwards, and this is how it reaches the head and face of its own accord. It enters the Liver, which according to tradition opens into the eyes, and the Lung, which governs the surface. It is credited with dispersing Wind-Heat that has risen to the upper body and clearing Liver Heat that shows itself through the eyes.

A reference herb for clear sight

Brightening the eyes is the action for which tradition has kept it, to the point of making it one of its reference herbs for the eyes. Li Shizhen judged that in this field it surpassed even chrysanthemum. Its neutrality is its strength: where plants with the same use are often frankly cold, it adds neither Heat nor Cold. It pairs readily with cassia seed: one works at the surface of the eye, the other clears the Liver from a deeper level.