Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Mongolian Milkvetch

Astragalus mongholicus

Also called Membranous Milk Vetch

Mongolian Milkvetch
Photo: Doronenko, CC BY 2.5

A perennial legume native to temperate Asia, grown mainly for its medicinal roots (huangqi, Radix Astragali) in traditional Chinese and Mongolian medicine. It is a field and garden herb rather than a common houseplant, and it needs full sun and well-drained soil.

Family
Fabaceae (Pea & bean family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Full sun
Water
Water moderately while establishing, then let it rely mostly on rain; avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Well-drained, sandy or loamy soil; tolerates poor, dry soils.
Temperature
Hardy in cold temperate climates; tolerates winter frost well.
How easy
Moderate
Edible
Yes, some parts
Native range
Siberia to Russian Far East and W. & N. China
Climate
temperate

About

Astragalus mongholicus, commonly known as Mongolian milkvetch in English; 'Хунчир' in Mongolian; huángqí (Chinese: 黃芪), běiqí (Chinese: 北芪) or huánghuā huángqí (Chinese: 黃花黃耆), in Mongolia, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae. It is one of the 50 fundamental herbs used in traditional Mongolian medicine. It is a perennial plant and it is not listed as being threatened.

Safety

Chemical constituents of the roots (Radix Astragali) include polysaccharides and triterpenoids (such as astragalosides), as well as isoflavones (including kumatakenin, calycosin, and formononetin) and their glycosides and malonates. It contains the saponin cycloastragenol.

Where it grows

A. mongholicus is widespread in temperate Asia, being found in Kazakhstan, from Siberia to the Russian Far East, in Mongolia, and in west and north China.

Other Astragalus plants

Chickpea milkvetch · Groundplum milkvetch · Yellow Alpine Milkvetch · Licorice milkvetch · Gum tragacanth milkvetch · Freckled milkvetch · Woollypod milkvetch · Marsh milkvetch · Cream milkvetch · Astragalus sarcocolla · Chinese milk-vetch · Milkvetch

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Astragalus mongholicus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…