Notoginseng, the root “not to be traded for gold”

San Qi, the Chinese name for notoginseng, reads “three seven”, and nobody agrees on its meaning: three branches and seven leaves, say some; “mountain lacquer”, which holds things together, read Li Shizhen. Of the same genus, Panax, as ginseng, it is a shade plant growing between 1,200 and 1,800 m that takes three to seven years to form a root ready for harvest. Its reference growing area is the prefecture of Wenshan, in Yunnan, on red soils; in Guangxi, its historical cradle, it is called Tian Qi. Two nicknames speak of its value: Jin Bu Huan, “not to be traded for gold”, and Xue Shen, “the ginseng of Blood”.

Setting the Blood in motion, without harshness

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, notoginseng is warm, sweet and bitter in flavour. Sweetness restores, bitterness brings down and disperses, and its warmth sets the Blood in motion without harshness. It is associated with the Liver, which stores the Blood and sees to its free flow, and with the Stomach, rich in Qi and Blood according to tradition: hence an unusually wide reach. Tradition credits it with moving the Blood and dispelling stasis, wherever it sees Blood that is halted, gathered or still, and with resolving what accumulates while easing what tightens.

Dispersing and holding at once

Its singularity lies in a resolved contradiction. Almost all plants that hold the Blood do so by cooling or tightening, at the risk of locking old Blood inside; notoginseng holds while dispersing what stagnates. Zhang Xichun summed it up in a phrase: it dissolves stagnant Blood “without harming new Blood”. With cool red sage, it forms a pair in which opposite natures balance each other. That does not make it a ginseng, though: ginseng supplements, notoginseng moves, and one does not replace the other.