What Are Sichuan Fritillary and Ping Fritillary? Learn to Tell the Difference Between the Two

Fritillary is a perennial herbaceous plant. Its bulb is used medicinally. It gets its name from its shape; the Commentary on the Classic of Materia Medica says: “it resembles clustered cowrie shells”, hence the name fritillary (beimu), and it has the effects of relieving cough and resolving phlegm, clearing heat and dispersing nodules. Other names: Qinmu, bitter vegetable, bitter flower, hollow grass, Yaoshi.Produced in Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan, the Qinba Mountains of Shaanxi, Gansu and other places.There are many kinds of fritillary, so what are Sichuan fritillary and Ping fritillary? How do you tell the two apart?

I. What are Sichuan fritillary and Ping fritillary?

1. Sichuan fritillary, also called Chuanbei, is the dried bulb of the Liliaceae plants Fritillaria cirrhosa, Fritillaria unibracteata, Fritillaria przewalskii and Fritillaria delavayi. The first three, depending on their different characteristics, are customarily called “Songbei” and “Qingbei”, while the last is customarily called “Lubei”. Because it is mainly produced in Sichuan, it is generally called Sichuan fritillary, or Chuanbei for short; its quality is relatively good, and it is regarded as an authentic medicinal material. In ancient times some people believed that the best Sichuan fritillary had a flat base and a pointed tip, hence the term pointed fritillary. Its nature is cool, sweet and neutral, and it enters the lung and stomach meridians; its effects are to moisten the lungs, relieve cough, resolve phlegm and calm wheezing, and to clear heat and resolve phlegm.

2. Ping fritillary, also called Pingbei, is the dried bulb of the Liliaceae plant Fritillaria ussuriensis, mainly distributed in the Changbai Mountains and the southern mountainous area of the Lesser Khingan Mountains in Northeast China, and mainly produced in Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and the provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi and Hebei. This medicine was first used outside the Shanhaiguan pass as a regional remedy; in the mid-19th century during the Xianfeng period, the Han, Korean, Manchu and Hui peoples of the Northeast already had folk proven recipes such as “fritillary pear” for treating lung-heat cough and wheezing. In the early 20th century, Jilin City already traded medicinal materials such as Ping fritillary and resold them inside the pass, so Ping fritillary began to enter the medicinal materials market inside the pass and was supplied for medicinal use in various places. Its flavor is bitter and pungent; its nature is slightly cold, and it enters the lung meridian; it clears heat and moistens the lungs, resolves phlegm and relieves cough, and mainly treats lung-heat dry cough, dry cough with little phlegm, yin-deficiency consumptive cough, coughing phlegm with blood, scrofula, acute mastitis and other conditions.

3. Ping fritillary has been widely used for a relatively short time; because it “disperses with its pungent nature” and “the pungent enters the lung”, in clinical traditional Chinese medicine it is mostly used to treat lung diseases, carbuncles and sores, and can be used to prepare compound fritillary tablets, children's Niuhuang Qingfei powder and many other Chinese patent medicines, in relatively large amounts. Sichuan fritillary has been used for a longer time; it is cool in nature and sweet, and more moistening than Zhejiang fritillary, so it is mostly used for chronic cough due to lung deficiency with little phlegm and dry throat. In recent years, alkaloids with antitussive and phlegm-resolving effects have also been extracted from the stems, leaves, flowers and fruits of Ping fritillary to make new drugs for treating bronchitis, with good results, showing a new avenue for comprehensive utilization.

From this it can be seen that the two differ in raw material, place of origin, effects and main indications, and because individuals differ in constitution and in the nature of their illness, the medicines used are also different. Therefore, when buying, everyone must learn to distinguish Ping fritillary from Sichuan fritillary.

II. How to distinguish Sichuan fritillary from Ping fritillary?

(1) Ping fritillary

This product is flat and spherical in shape, like an abacus bead, 0.5-1 cm high and 0.6-2 cm in diameter. The surface is milky white or pale yellowish white; the outer layer has two scale leaves, plump and full, similar in size or with one piece larger, clasping each other, with the top slightly flat or slightly sunken and slightly split. The central scale is small; the texture is firm and brittle, rich in starch. The biggest difference between Ping fritillary and Sichuan fritillary is that Ping fritillary is larger than Sichuan fritillary, flat rather than round, often not white in color, and bitter in taste.

(2) Sichuan fritillary

Sichuan fritillary has many varieties and can be divided into three specifications: Songbei, Qingbei and Lubei, whose medicinal characteristics each differ.

(1) Songbei: oval in shape, with uniformly sized grains, generally not more than 1 cm in diameter. The top is slightly pointed and closed. The bottom is flat and can stand upright and stable. The two outer scales differ greatly in size; the small scale is wrapped inside the heart-shaped large scale, leaving a crescent-shaped part exposed, commonly called “embracing the moon in one's arms”. The exterior is pure white and glossy. The texture is hard and brittle, with abundant starch.

(2) Qingbei: flat spherical in shape, with the two outer scales similar in size. The top is open, with several small scales inside; the grains are mostly skewed and cannot stand upright and stable. The exterior is pale yellowish white, and the texture is looser than Songbei, with starch.

(3) Lubei: mostly prismatic or conical, with large grains, shaped like a horse's tooth, hence commonly called “horse-tooth mouth”. Brittle in texture, with starch. All three kinds of fritillary have a faint odor and a slightly bitter taste.