Hai Jin Sha, a Chinese herbal medicine. It is the spores of the plant Hai Jin Sha. Do you know the plant morphology of Hai Jin Sha?
Image of Hai Jin Sha
It is a perennial climbing herb, growing 1-4 meters long. The rhizome is thin and creeping, covered with fine soft hairs. The stem is slender and weak, with a dry straw color and white hairs.
The leaves are pinnately compound, papery, and covered with fine soft hairs on both sides. The fertile leaflets are ovate-triangular, 12-20cm long and 10-16cm wide, with serrated or irregularly divided margins. The upper leaflets are sessile and pinnate or lanceolate, while the lower leaflets have stalks.
The infertile leaflets are triangular and usually similar to the fertile leaflets, but sometimes they are pinnately compound with wide linear leaflets or divided into irregular small pieces at the base.
The sporangia are borne on the back of the fertile leaflets, arranged in spike-like clusters at the tips of the teeth and lobes of the 2nd order leaflets. The spikes are 2-4mm long. The sporangial covers are scale-like, egg-shaped, with one transversely egg-shaped sporangium beneath each cover, borne on the lateral side of the annulus, clustered together.
The sporangia are mostly produced in summer and autumn. The whole plant of another species, Lygodium microphyllum (Cav.) R.Br., which belongs to the same genus, is also used as medicine among the folk in Guangdong and Guangxi. The main differences between the two species are that the leaflets of Lygodium microphyllum are pinnately compound and the base of the leaflets has joints.
Ecological environment: It grows in shady and wet slopes or along the edges of roads in forests.
Resource distribution: It is distributed in East China, Central and South China, Southwest China, and Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.
