Bei Dou Gen

Menispermum dauricum, the Daurian moonseed, is a slender deciduous woody climbing vine of the Menispermaceae family native to northeastern China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, and adjacent Russia, where it inhabits forest margins, thickets, and stream banks. The plant produces twining annual or biennial green stems that ascend two to three meters from a long, creeping, branching, yellow-brown subterranean rhizome. Leaves are alternate, long-petioled, and broadly peltate with a heart-shaped or shallowly three- to seven-lobed outline, smooth above and finely pubescent beneath. The vine is dioecious, bearing small greenish-yellow unisexual flowers in slender axillary panicles in early summer; female plants subsequently produce small spherical drupes that ripen blue-black, each containing the distinctive crescent or horseshoe-shaped seed characteristic of the family.