What Does a Gastrodia Plant Look Like? A Guide to Its Appearance

Gastrodia is one of the common traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, and many growers have started cultivating it, so what does a gastrodia plant look like? Let's take a look.

1. What does a gastrodia plant look like?

A saprophytic herb. The plant is 30-100 cm tall, sometimes reaching 2 m; the rhizome is thick, tuberous, elliptical to nearly dumbbell-shaped, fleshy, 8-12 cm long, 3-5 cm in diameter, sometimes larger, with relatively dense nodes, and the nodes are covered with many triangular broadly ovate sheaths. The stem is upright, orange-yellow, yellow, grayish brown or blue-green, without green leaves, and the lower part is covered with several membranous sheaths.

The raceme is 5-30 cm long, usually bearing 30-50 flowers; the bracts are oblong-lanceolate, 1-1.5 cm long, membranous; the pedicel and ovary are 7-12 mm long, slightly shorter than the bracts; the flowers are twisted, orange-yellow, pale yellow, blue-green or yellow-white, nearly upright; the perianth tube formed by the fusion of the sepals and petals is about 1 cm long, 5-7 mm in diameter, nearly obliquely ovate-cylindrical, with 5 lobes at the tip, but the gap at the front, that is, where the two lateral sepals are fused, reaches as deep as 5 mm, and the base of the tube protrudes forward; the outer whorl lobes (the free parts of the sepals) are ovate-triangular with blunt tips; the inner whorl lobes (the free parts of the petals) are nearly oblong and smaller; the lip is oblong-ovate, 6-7 mm long, 3-4 mm wide, 3-lobed, with its base attached to the end of the column foot and the inner wall of the perianth tube and bearing a pair of fleshy calli, the upper part free, with papillae on the surface and an irregular short fringe on the margin; the column is 5-7 mm long, with a short column foot.

2. The effects of gastrodia

Clinically, it is mostly used for headache and dizziness, numbness of the limbs, infantile convulsions, epilepsy, spasms, tetanus and other conditions. Gastrodia used to rely on wild resources; after the successful transition from wild to cultivated in the 1970s, cultivated gastrodia became the main commercial source. It dispels wind-dampness, relieves pain, and promotes the movement of qi and blood circulation.

Gastrodia is a relatively precious traditional Chinese medicine, in great demand on the market, and its sales are also quite good.