Di Jin Cao

Di Jin Cao (地錦草) is the dried whole plant of Euphorbia humifusa Willd. ex Schltdl., or in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia also Euphorbia maculata L. (Euphorbiaceae), prostrate annual herbs widespread on roadsides, field margins, and waste places throughout China and much of the temperate world. Plants form flat mats of slender reddish stems with opposite small oblong leaves, often with a central dark blotch (in E. maculata); stems exude milky white latex when broken. Tiny cyathia bearing minute flowers and three-lobed capsules are borne in leaf axils through summer. The whole flowering plant is collected, washed, and sun-dried. In TCM, Di Jin Cao is classified as pungent and neutral, entering the Liver and Large Intestine channels, and is used to clear heat, detoxify, cool blood, stop bleeding, and resolve damp for damp-heat dysentery, diarrhea, hematuria, hemoptysis, traumatic bleeding, and damp-heat jaundice.