The open plant encyclopedia
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.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Pseudostellaria heterophylla
A low-growing tuberous perennial of the pink family, grown mainly in China for its tuberous roots used in traditional medicine. It is a woodland-edge plant that prefers cool, moist, shaded conditions and rich, well-drained soil.
Pseudostellaria heterophylla, known commonly as hai er shen (Chinese: 孩兒參, kid ginseng, child ginseng), tai zi shen (Chinese: 太子參, crown prince ginseng), and false starwort, is a eudicot species in the family Caryophyllaceae. It is used in Chinese medicine and herbalism and is proclaimed to tonify the qi and generate yin fluids. It has been labeled as an adaptogen. It is known as the "ginseng of the lungs". The plant is a low growing plant of the pink family that is grown in Southern China in the provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Henan, Shaanxi, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Shanxi.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pseudostellaria heterophylla 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.
