Luo Shi Teng, the vine that wraps itself around stone

Luo Shi Teng reads « the vine that wraps itself around stone »: it climbs rocks and walls and clings to them. But Luo is also the character Chinese medicine uses for the collaterals, those fine branches through which the Qi and the Blood reach the periphery, and tradition did not miss the connection. It is the leafy stem of star jasmine, an evergreen vine with tough, glossy leaves, whose small, highly fragrant white flowers open into five twisted lobes like a star. It is harvested from winter to the following spring, and a good batch keeps its leaves attached.

A cool vine for the collaterals

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the vine is slightly cold and bitter: bitterness makes things descend and dries Dampness, coolness clears Heat. This is what sets it apart from almost all its neighbours, since plants that expel Wind and Dampness are usually warm. It is associated with the Heart, which governs the Blood, the Liver, which governs the sinews, and the Kidney, which governs the bones. Vines, tradition says, enter the collaterals, because they lengthen and divide as the collaterals do: this one expels Wind and opens the collaterals when Wind and Dampness block them together with Heat.

Softening the sinews

Its own strength, according to the commentators, is to make the sinews supple and open the collaterals. Li Shizhen, for his part, was annoyed that physicians scorned it because it is common and cheap. It is readily combined with kadsura pepper vine, slightly warm, each correcting the other’s bias, or with honeysuckle vine.