What Is the Difference Between Agrimony and Mesona? How to Tell These Two Plants Apart in One Article

Agrimony and mesona look similar and have similar names, so people often confuse them.So what is the difference between agrimony and mesona?

1. What is the difference between agrimony and mesona?

1. Family and genus

Mesona, also known as xianrencao and liangfen grass, belongs to the Lamiaceae family, Mesona genus, an annual herbaceous perennial-root plant; planting once can benefit for many years, reaching up to 1 m in height; leaves are opposite, flowering in late autumn. It grows along ditch edges and in dry sandy grassland.

Agrimony (a Rosaceae plant) generally refers to Agrimonia pilosa, also known as laohezui, maojiaoyin, shizhou longyacao, and others. It is a perennial herbaceous plant in the Rosaceae family, Agrimonia genus.

2. Leaves

Mesona leaves are narrowly ovate to broadly ovate or nearly round, 2-5 cm long and 0.8-2.8 cm wide, with a sharply acute, obtuse, or sometimes rounded base, margins with shallow or deep serrations, papery or nearly membranous, with fine bristles or soft hairs on both surfaces.

Agrimony leaves are obovate, obovate-elliptic, or obovate-lanceolate, 1.5-5 cm long and 1-2.5 cm wide, apex acute to rounded-obtuse, rarely acuminate, base cuneate to broadly cuneate, margins with acute to rounded-obtuse serrations.

3. Effects

Mesona has the functions of clearing summer heat, relieving fever, and promoting urination.

Agrimony has the effects of stopping bleeding, strengthening the stomach, lubricating the intestines, stopping dysentery, and killing parasites. It mainly treats fatigue and exhaustion, irregular menstruation in women, red flooding and white vaginal discharge, stomach cold and abdominal pain, red and white dysentery, vomiting blood, coughing blood, intestinal wind, blood in urine, uterine bleeding, duodenal bleeding, and other conditions. Agrimonine extracted from the whole plant is used as a hemostatic drug.

4. Flowers

Mesona has verticillasters arranged in a terminal raceme-like inflorescence 2-8 cm long; the corolla is white or slightly red, 3-3.5 mm long.

Agrimony has a spike-like raceme terminal inflorescence, branched or unbranched, the inflorescence axis covered with soft hairs, pedicels 1-5 mm long, petals yellow, oblong; stamens 5-8-15; styles 2, filamentous, stigma capitate.

5. Origin

Mesona is produced in Taiwan, China, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Guangxi. The type specimen was collected from the coastal islands of Guangdong and Fujian.

Agrimony is distributed in all provinces and regions of northern and southern China. It is also distributed in central Europe as well as Russia, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and northern Vietnam. It often grows by streams, roadsides, grasslands, shrub thickets, forest edges, and under open forests, at altitudes of 100-3800 m.

From the above introduction to the differences between agrimony and mesona, did you gain anything?