What are the benefits and effects of Agastache rugosa? A complete guide
Agastache rugosa, also known as Hexiang, is a perennial herbaceous plant. Its flowers are usually blue-purple and very beautiful. Let's take a look at its benefits and effects!
Agastache rugosa is a perennial herbaceous plant with erect stems, 0.5-1.5 m tall, four-angled. Leaves are cordate-ovate to oblong-lanceolate. Verticillasters are many-flowered. The calyx is tubular and obconical. The corolla is pale purple-blue; the stamens extend beyond the corolla, and the filaments are slender, flat, and hairless. The style is nearly as long as the stamens, thread-like, with two equal lobes at the apex. The disk is thick and ring-shaped. The ovary lobes are tomentose at the top. Mature nutlets are ovoid-oblong, about 1.8 mm long and about 1.1 mm wide, with ridges on the ventral surface, short stiff hairs at the apex, and brown in color.
Agastache rugosa is a high-calcium, high-carotene food. The tender leaves contain water and large amounts of protein, fat, carbohydrates, carotene, vitamins, nicotinic acid, calcium, phosphorus, iron, and more. The whole plant contains aromatic volatile oil, whose main components are methylchavicol, limonene, and others, all of which have a certain inhibitory effect on various pathogenic fungi. The aromatic volatile oil is a raw material for making many Chinese patent medicines.
Agastache rugosa is pungent in flavor and slightly warm in nature, entering the Spleen, Stomach, and Lung meridians; it is aromatic and ascending-dispersing; it has the effects of relieving summerheat and releasing the exterior, transforming dampness and fortifying the spleen, and regulating qi and harmonizing the stomach; it mainly treats exogenous summerheat-dampness, cold-dampness, damp-warmth, and the cold-heat, dizziness, chest and epigastric stuffiness, poor appetite, heaviness of the body, vomiting, and diarrhea caused by dampness obstructing the middle jiao, as well as hyperemesis gravidarum, restless fetus, bad breath, sinusitis, and tinea of the hands and feet.
The edible parts of Agastache rugosa are generally the tender stems and leaves, which are a fine wild delicacy. They can be served cold-dressed, stir-fried, deep-fried, or made into porridge. Agastache rugosa can also be used as a cooking seasoning or ingredient. Because it has the effect of fortifying the spleen and boosting qi, it is a cooking ingredient that is both food and medicine, so in some relatively obscure dishes and folk snacks it is used to enrich the flavor and increase nutritional value.
Main therapeutic functions: aromatically transforming turbidity, harmonizing the middle and stopping vomiting, releasing the exterior and relieving summerheat. It is used for dampness-turbidity obstructing the middle, epigastric stuffiness and vomiting, summerheat-dampness exterior syndrome, the early stage of damp-warmth, fever and fatigue, chest tightness and discomfort, cold-dampness closing summerheat, abdominal pain with vomiting and diarrhea, and sinusitis with headache. Agastache rugosa has a bactericidal function; holding one leaf in the mouth can remove bad breath, prevent infectious diseases, and can also be used as a preservative. In summer, drinking porridge or tea made with Agastache rugosa is effective for severe summerheat-dampness, dampness obstructing the spleen and stomach, abdominal distension and fullness, heaviness and of the limbs, and nausea and vomiting.
Because Agastache rugosa itself is a plant with an aromatic scent, the whole plant is fragrant, so it is often paired with other aromatic plants and used in green spaces serving blind people, which can improve blind people's understanding of the plant world. Agastache rugosa planting strips are mostly used for mass planting in flower borders, beside ponds, and in courtyards.
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