Di Yu is a plant of the Rosaceae family, with a cold nature and a sour and bitter taste. It is distributed in Europe and China. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that Di Yu has a cold and astringent nature, and should be used with caution in cases of weak and cold constitution or stagnation!
Image of Di Yu
Di Yu has the effects of cooling blood, stopping bleeding, detoxifying, and healing wounds. It is used for blood in the stool, hemorrhoids bleeding, bloody dysentery, excessive menstrual bleeding, burns, scalds, and abscesses.
Di Yu is a perennial herb with a height of 1 to 2 meters. It has a stout rhizome, with several thick spindle-shaped roots. The stem is erect and has edges.
The leaves are pinnately compound, alternate; the basal leaves are larger than the stem leaves, with long petioles, while the stem leaves are almost stalkless, with semi-circular stipules that form a cup shape, and the margins of the stipules have triangular teeth.
There are 5 to 19 leaflets, elliptical to oblong-ovate, with a length of 2 to 7 centimeters and a width of 0.5 to 3 centimeters. The apex is pointed or blunt, and the base is truncate, broadly cuneate, or slightly heart-shaped. The margins of the leaflets have pointed and rounded serrations, and the leaflets have short or almost no petioles.
The flowers are small, densely arranged in a inverted lanceolate, short cylindrical, or nearly spherical spike-like inflorescence, sparsely distributed at the top of the stem. The inflorescence stalk of Di Yu is slender and smooth or slightly hairy. The flowers are dark purple, with 2 bracts, membranous, lanceolate, and covered with fine soft hairs. The corolla is 4-lobed, elliptical or broadly ovate; there are 4 stamens, attached to the throat of the corolla tube, with black-purple anthers; the ovary is superior, ovoid and hairy, the style is slender, and the stigma is nipple-like.
The fruit of Di Yu is oblong or ovate, brown, with 4 longitudinal ridges, resembling narrow wings. There is one seed. The flowering and fruiting period is from June to September.
