Glossy privet, the tree of constancy

Nü Zhen, “the constant woman”, names the tree and not the fruit. Li Shizhen gives the reason: this tree stays green and fresh in the depths of winter, with the steadfastness of one who keeps her faith. The glossy privet, Ligustrum lucidum, is an evergreen tree of the olive family; its ripe fruit is used, a small blue-black, kidney-shaped drupe that stays on the tree all winter and holds a single seed. Tradition holds that fruits picked around the winter solstice are best; Zhejiang, around Jinhua, and Jiangsu are said to give the finest quality.

Nourishing the Liver and Kidney Yin

In traditional Chinese medicine, the fruit is cool, sweet and bitter in taste. The sweet taste nourishes, the bitter one directs the action downward, towards the Liver and the Kidney; its coolness lets it replenish the Yin without producing Heat. Tradition holds that the Liver and the Kidney share the same source, and that their Yin is common: this fruit enters precisely both. It is a gentle, “clean” tonic: unlike the great Yin tonics, heavy and sticky, it does not burden the Middle, hence its reputation as a substance that can be taken over a long period. With goji berry, whose warmth tempers its coolness, it tonifies the Liver and the Kidney.

The gaze and the hair

The Liver, tradition says, opens into the eyes: nourishing its Yin means giving back to the eyes what moistens them, and the fruit also dispels a slight Liver Heat. Tradition entrusts the hair to the Kidney too, and the Blood that nourishes it to the Liver; hair that loses its colour before its time is, for tradition, a sign that this Yin is wearing thin, and the fruit works at the root, not on the shade. The wine-prepared form, steamed until black and glossy, tempers its coolness and strengthens its action on the Yin. Modern research is notably interested in oleanolic acid.