Pulsatilla cernua
StarPulsatilla cernua
Synonyms: Anemone cernua
Safety at a glance
No rule in our tables for this herb: pregnancy, breastfeeding, incompatible pairs (十八反 / 十九畏), herb–drug, dose ceiling. This is not a safety clearance.
Not graded — No toxicity grade is recorded. Most herbs in the catalogue carry none.
Western Herbalism Properties
Botanical Description
Pulsatilla cernua, the nodding or narrow-leaf pasque-flower (Korean pasque flower), is a low perennial herb of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae) native to north-eastern Asia, including China, Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East. It grows from a stout, blackish rhizome and reaches about 15 to 45 cm in height, the whole plant densely clothed in long, soft, silky hairs. The basal leaves are deeply divided into narrow segments and emerge with the flowers in spring. Each leafless flowering stem bears a single, bell-shaped, nodding flower with six dark red to purple, silky-hairy petaloid sepals surrounding a central boss of numerous yellow stamens. As the seeds ripen the styles elongate into long, feathery, silvery plumes that aid wind dispersal, forming the characteristic shaggy seed-head. It grows on dry, sunny slopes, alpine meadows, rocky ground and grassland. Like other buttercups the fresh plant is acrid and toxic, containing ranunculin which yields the irritant protoanemonin.
Active Constituents
Anemoside B4
Oleanane-type triterpenoid saponin (hederagenin bisdesmoside)Concentration: One of nine constituents quantified by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS across fifteen wild and cultivated batches of this species; it is the dominant saponin of the root
The principal saponin of Pulsatilla roots generally and the marker on which Pulsatillae Radix quality is usually judged. It is a haemolytic surfactant saponin, which is why Pulsatilla drugs are given by mouth and never parenterally, and why the crude drug irritates mucosa. Its presence in Pulsatilla cernua is one reason the species passes visual and simple chemical checks when substituted for the Pharmacopoeia drug, while the fuller saponin fingerprint does distinguish the two.
Anemoside A3
Triterpenoid saponinConcentration: Quantified in the same nine-analyte HPLC-ESI-MS/MS assay across fifteen batches
A monodesmosidic congener of anemoside B4 and one of the routine quantitative markers for this species. Its ratio to anemoside B4 is part of what separates Pulsatilla cernua from Pulsatilla chinensis, Pulsatilla dahurica and Pulsatilla turczaninovii in hierarchical cluster analysis of the genus.
23-Hydroxybetulinic acid
Lupane-type triterpene acidConcentration: Quantified as one of the nine main active constituents of the root
The best-studied free triterpene acid of Pulsatilla roots and the aglycone behind much of the genus's antitumour literature. In this species it is a routine assay marker rather than a compound tested on its own.
Pulsatilloside B and pulsatilloside C
Triterpenoid saponinsConcentration: Quantified among the nine main constituents of the root
Genus-characteristic saponins used together with the anemosides as quantitative markers. They are part of the fingerprint that lets ultra-high-performance chromatography distinguish authentic Pulsatillae Radix from this species even at 5 percent admixture.
Raddeanoside R7
Triterpenoid saponinConcentration: Isolated and characterised from this species; not quantified in the crude drug
Isolated from Pulsatilla cernua by the group that later tested it. Against Caov3 and OVCAR3 ovarian carcinoma cells it gave IC50 values of 7.27 and 8.25 micromolar, cut migration by more than 60 percent, arrested cells in S phase and raised reactive oxygen species. The compound name commemorates Anemone raddeana, in which it was first found, so its presence here is a shared-chemistry point between two closely related Ranunculaceae drugs rather than a marker unique to Pulsatilla.
Bayogenin-based triterpenoid saponin and a gypsogenin-based saponin
Oleanane-type triterpenoid saponinsConcentration: Minor root constituents; described as new compounds in 2010 and 2020 respectively
Two saponins reported as new from the roots of this species. The 2020 compound is notable for a gypsogenin aglycone, which the authors describe as rare in the genus, so it is a potential species-level chemical marker. Neither has been tested for activity.
Ajugasterone C and beta-ecdysterone
PhytoecdysteroidsConcentration: Two of the nine constituents quantified in the root by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS
Insect-moulting-hormone analogues, an unusual class to find alongside the saponins and a distinctive part of this species' quantitative profile. They are pharmacologically quite unlike the saponins, and their inclusion among the assay markers means a quality certificate that reports them is describing this species rather than Pharmacopoeia Pulsatillae Radix.
Protoanemonin (released from ranunculin in fresh or bruised tissue)
Unsaturated lactone (vesicant)Concentration: Formed enzymatically from ranunculin when fresh tissue is crushed; it dimerises to the non-vesicant anemonin on drying, so properly dried root should contain little or none
The most safety-relevant constituent of this plant and the reason fresh material must not be applied to skin. Protoanemonin disrupts disulfide bonds in skin, destroying the subepidermal junction and raising blisters, and it does so after only brief contact. A 52-year-old woman who applied a poultice of the ground stem, leaves and root of Pulsatilla cernua var. koreana to her feet for plantar fasciitis had burning pain within two hours and multiple erythematous bullae within four, and needed systemic steroids, antibiotics and antihistamines, with hyperpigmentation persisting after the lesions healed at two weeks. Ranunculin occurs throughout the Ranunculaceae; the traditional insistence on dried root is a safety measure, not a convention.
⚠ Drug Interactions
Bai Tou Weng (Pulsatillae Radix, Pulsatilla chinensis)
The Chinese Pharmacopoeia recognises only Pulsatilla chinensis as the source of Bai Tou Weng. Pulsatilla cernua, known in Chinese as Chao Xian Bai Tou Weng, is a documented regional customary substitute in Liaoning and Jilin and is treated in the analytical literature explicitly as an adulterant of Pulsatillae Radix, with dedicated chromatographic methods built to detect it down to 5 percent admixture. The scale of the problem is not marginal: an ITS2 barcoding survey of thirty commercial Baitouweng products found only two derived from authentic Pulsatilla chinensis. Confusion runs in more than one direction, since Potentilla chinensis, a Rosaceae herb sold as Wei Ling Cai, is also a recorded market substitute for Bai Tou Weng. Separately, Pulsatilla cernua var. koreana, published as Pulsatilla koreana, is the accepted source of Pulsatillae Radix in Korean practice, so the same binomial is an adulterant in one country and the official drug in another.
Clinical note: Do not treat a Pulsatilla cernua record as interchangeable with Bai Tou Weng. If Pharmacopoeia Bai Tou Weng is intended, specify Pulsatilla chinensis by binomial and require a chromatographic or DNA identity check rather than a visual one; the woolly root crown that gives the drug its name is shared across the confusable species and identifies nothing. If Korean-sourced Pulsatillae Radix is supplied, expect Pulsatilla cernua var. koreana and record it as such.
Topical medicines and dressings applied to the same skin site
A poultice of fresh stem, leaf and root of this species caused a documented chemical burn in a patient using it as a folk remedy, with burning pain at two hours and bullae at four. The agent is protoanemonin, released from ranunculin when the fresh plant is bruised, which destroys the subepidermal junction. Once bullae have formed the skin barrier is gone, so any co-applied topical drug, including corticosteroids and antibiotics used to treat the burn itself, is absorbed to a degree that intact skin would not permit, and any topical with its own irritant potential compounds the injury.
Clinical note: Never apply fresh or freshly ground Pulsatilla to skin, and warn patients who might gather it themselves. If a burn has occurred, treat it as a chemical burn: irrigate, do not occlude with further herbal preparations, and account for enhanced systemic absorption when prescribing topical steroid or antibiotic to the affected area. Properly dried root, in which protoanemonin has dimerised to anemonin, does not carry this hazard.
Corticosteroids and other immunosuppressants
Oleanane saponins isolated from the roots of this species under the name Pulsatilla koreana inhibited TNF-alpha-stimulated NF-kappaB activation in HepG2 reporter cells with IC50 values of 0.75 to 8.30 micromolar and suppressed iNOS and ICAM-1 transcription, and a further set activated PPAR transcriptional activity with EC50 values of 0.9 to 10.8 micromolar. Those are potent in-vitro concentrations at defined nuclear targets that immunosuppressive and glitazone-class drugs also act through. Whether any of it survives oral dosing is unknown: saponins of this size are poorly absorbed, and no pharmacokinetic study of this species exists.
Clinical note: No dose adjustment is indicated on this evidence. Record the herb on the medication list for transplant, autoimmune and glitazone-treated patients so that an unexplained change in control is not attributed elsewhere, and stop it if one occurs.
Dosage Calculator
⚖ Dosage Calculator
A weight-based mathematical estimate for Pulsatilla cernua. Not a prescription.
Evidence Tier
5 studies on recordRecorded studies by study design, strongest design at the top. This is a study-design tier only, not a GRADE rating: it does not weigh risk of bias, consistency or precision.
Systematic review / meta-analysis
0
Randomized controlled trial
0
Other clinical trial
0
Observational / case report
1
0 verified · 1 unverified
In vitro / animal
2
0 verified · 2 unverified
Other / unclassified
2
0 verified · 2 unverified
Verified: design read from PubMed for a DOI that resolves to the cited paper Unverified: taken from the study's recorded description
Clinical Studies
A Case of Irritant Contact Dermatitis Associated with Pulsatilla koreana
The only published human report of harm from this species and the most clinically useful item in its literature. A 52-year-old woman applied a mix of the ground stem, leaves and roots of Pulsatilla koreana, a variety of Pulsatilla cernua, to both feet as a folk remedy for four months of plantar fasciitis. She had burning pain two hours after application and multiple erythematous bullae two hours after that. Treatment was systemic steroid, antibiotics and antihistamines with daily topical dressings; the lesions cleared in two weeks leaving hyperpigmentation. The authors attribute the injury to protoanemonin, which disrupts skin disulfide bonds and destroys the subepidermal junction after even brief contact.
Rapidly discriminate commercial medicinal Pulsatilla chinensis (Bge.) Regel from its adulterants using ITS2 barcoding and specific PCR-RFLP assay
An ITS2 barcode library was built from 105 samples covering 12 Pulsatilla species and 10 common adulterants, and Pulsatilla chinensis was separated from its 11 congeners by two stable single-nucleotide polymorphisms, with a low-cost PCR-RFLP assay derived from it. The finding that matters clinically is the market survey: of 30 commercial Baitouweng products tested, only two were authentic Pulsatilla chinensis. This is the strongest available evidence that a practitioner ordering Bai Tou Weng is more likely than not to receive a congener such as Pulsatilla cernua.
Raddeanoside R7 inhibits proliferation and migration of ovarian cancer cells through P13K-AKT signaling
Raddeanoside R7, previously isolated by the same group from Pulsatilla cernua, was cytotoxic to Caov3 and OVCAR3 ovarian carcinoma cells with IC50 values of 7.27 and 8.25 micromolar, reduced migration by over 60 percent, induced S-phase arrest and apoptosis, and raised reactive oxygen species. Transcriptomics and docking nominated CCND2 and HSPA8. The authors note that PI3K-AKT activation rather than inhibition appeared to mediate the effect, which they describe as counterintuitive. Cell-line work on an isolated saponin; there is no animal study and no trial of this herb in cancer.
Anti-Inflammatory and PPAR Transactivational Effects of Oleanane-Type Triterpenoid Saponins from the Roots of Pulsatilla koreana
Twenty-three oleanane saponins were isolated from a methanol extract of the roots of Pulsatilla koreana, the Korean variety of this species. Five inhibited TNF-alpha-stimulated NF-kappaB activation in HepG2 reporter cells with IC50 values of 0.75 to 8.30 micromolar, two of them also suppressing iNOS and ICAM-1 transcription, and ten activated PPAR transcriptional activity with EC50 values of 0.9 to 10.8 micromolar. Reporter-gene assays in a hepatoma line; no absorption, animal or human data accompany them.
Digital identification and adulteration analysis of Pulsatilla Radix and Pulsatilla Cernua based on “digital identity” and UHPLC-QTOF-MSE
Written explicitly to detect Pulsatilla cernua as an adulterant of Pulsatillae Radix. Ion sets unique to each drug were extracted from multiple batches by UHPLC-QTOF-MSE and used as digital identities against which individual samples are matched. The method identified either drug at a matching credibility of at least 70 percent, and detected Pulsatilla cernua in a mixed sample at 5 percent admixture. Its existence is itself the evidence that the substitution is a routine market problem rather than a theoretical one.
Historical Texts
Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, under the drug name Bai Tou Weng
Han dynasty, compiled by c. 200 CEShang Han Lun (Zhang Zhongjing), source of Bai Tou Weng Tang
Eastern Han, c. 200 to 220 CEKorean Herbal Pharmacopoeia, under the drug name Baekduong (Pulsatillae Radix)
Republic of Korea, published 2002 with later revisionsChinese regional customary usage of Liaoning and Jilin, under the name Chao Xian Bai Tou Weng
Modern, recorded in twentieth and twenty-first century Chinese materia medica surveysReferences
- Huijun Xu, Xiaowei Shi, Xiang Ji, Yingfeng Du, Hong Zhu, Lantong Zhang. Qualitative and quantitative determination of nine main active constituents in Pulsatilla cernua by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry . Journal of Separation Science (2011) [DOI]
- Miao-Miao Jin, Wen-Dan Zhang, Geng-Shen Song, Yan-Mei Xu, Ying-Feng Du, Wei Guo, Liang Cao, Hui-Jun Xu. Discrimination and Chemical Phylogenetic Study of Four Pulsatilla Herbs Using UPLC–ESI–MS/MS Combined with Hierarchical Cluster Analysis . Journal of Chromatographic Science (2018) [DOI]
- Lu Zhang, Ming-Hua Li, Jing Tian, Meng Yin, Xian-Long Cheng, Feng Wei, Shuang-Cheng Ma. Identification of Pulsatilla chinensis (Bge.) Regel and look-alike species by UHPLC-TOF-MS using multivariate statistical analysis . Journal of Separation Science (2022) [DOI]
- Yajuan Xu, Lu Bai, Yonghong Liu, Yue Liu, Tunhai Xu, Shengxu Xie, Yunshan Si, Haiou Zhou, Tonghua Liu, Dongming Xu. A New Triterpenoid Saponin from Pulsatilla cernua . Molecules (2010) [DOI]
- An-Dong Wang, Ying Bao, Xia Wang, Mei-Chen Li, Xu-Hong Ren, Jian-Yu Liu, Yong-Nan Xu. A new triterpenoid saponin from Pulsatilla cernua predicted by NMR-based mosaic method . Natural Product Research (2020) [DOI]
- Qiu-jie Li, Xi Wang, Jun-ru Wang, Na Su, Ling Zhang, Yue-ping Ma, Zhao-yang Chang, Liang Zhao, Daniel Potter. Efficient Identification of Pulsatilla (Ranunculaceae) Using DNA Barcodes and Micro-Morphological Characters . Frontiers in Plant Science (2019) [DOI]
- Shota Harimoto, Hiroyuki Kataoka, Masako Kubo. Seed germinability in the endangered Pulsatilla cernua (Ranunculaceae) following cold storage for up to 31 years . Plant Species Biology (2022) [DOI]
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before using any herbal remedy, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or taking medications.
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