Gu Sui Bu, the fern that enters the Bones

Gu Sui Bu is one of the most direct names in the pharmacopoeia: it reads “mender of broken bone”, and was reportedly given to the plant by a Tang emperor, Xuanzong. It was previously called Hou Jiang, “monkey ginger”. Its other names all say ginger, for a fleshy, stocky, branching rhizome, densely covered with brown scales as soft as hair. Yet it is neither a ginger nor a root: it is the rhizome of Drynaria fortunei, a fern that clings to trunks, rocks and walls. Its sterile fronds, leathery and lobed like an oak leaf, form a basket against their support, hence its name of basket fern. Its reference terroirs are Hubei, Jiangxi and Sichuan.

Supplementing the Kidney, strengthening the Bones

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the rhizome is warm and bitter, and it enters the Kidney and the Liver. Tradition holds that the Kidney governs the Bones and produces the Marrow, and that the Liver governs the sinews; Li Shizhen sums it all up in one sentence: it is a Kidney substance, “that is why it enters the Bones”. By warming the Kidney Yang, it supports the function by which the Kidney governs the Bones, and tradition also links the teeth to it, “the surplus of the Bones”. This is its core register, and the sand-fried form, rid of its scales, brings it to the fore.

Setting the Blood in motion

Its combination of flavours is unusual for a supplementing herb: it is not sweet, and its bitterness draws it towards the Blood and downwards, while the warmth sets it in motion. Its affinity for the Kidney means this movement is held to reach the bone itself. An ancient text credits it with a fine duality: it “does not let what has set into clots linger, nor let what flows run astray”. With teasel root, gentler and more nourishing, it forms a classic pair that supplements the Liver and Kidney and strengthens sinews and Bones.