He Ye Di

He Ye Di, also called He Di or, in Li Shizhen's naming, He Bi, is only the small disc of leaf tissue cut from the centre of the lotus leaf where the petiole joins the blade. It is dispensed by count, classically four to ten pieces, not by weight. Because it is a small offcut of a much cheaper and more abundant drug that shares its taste, nature and part of its action, substitution with plain He Ye or with the adjacent petiole He Geng is easy and largely undetectable once cut. The functions that distinguish it, harmonising the stomach and calming the fetus, stopping bleeding and astringing vaginal discharge, and raising sunken clear qi in chronic diarrhoea and rectal prolapse, are not the standard indications of the blade.

The leaf base is prescribed in Chinese medicine precisely for threatened miscarriage, a use that goes back to Li Shizhen's instruction to stir-fry it, powder it and take it in rice water for restless fetal movement. Against that, there is no modern pharmacology, no toxicology and no phytochemistry specific to this plant part; it is leaf tissue and so presumably carries the aporphine alkaloids of the blade, including nuciferine, which is centrally active at serotonin and dopamine receptors and crosses into brain in animals. No reproductive toxicity study exists for lotus leaf alkaloids.