Traditionally used for
- Nose & throat
- Cough & breathing
- Colds & fever
- Bowel health
- Nerves & recovery
- Skin
☯ TCM Properties
Clears Heat, cools the Blood, resolves swelling, breaks up clots and removes toxicity
Traditional Chinese Uses
She Mei (Herba Duchesneae Indicae) is the whole plant of the mock or Indian strawberry, Duchesnea indica, a Heat-clearing, toxicity-resolving folk herb. Sweet, bitter and sour with a cold nature, entering the Lung, Large Intestine and Liver channels, it clears Heat, cools the Blood, resolves toxicity and reduces swelling, and disperses clots. It is applied to Heat-toxin conditions such as sore, swollen throat, mouth sores, cough from Lung-Heat, Damp-Heat dysentery, and to boils, abscesses and snake or insect bites, where the fresh crushed herb is also applied topically.
Its Blood-cooling action extends to Heat in the Blood with bleeding such as hematemesis, and it has traditional use in febrile disease with convulsions. It is decocted (commonly 9-15 g, larger amounts fresh) or juiced; being cold, it is used cautiously where there is no Heat.
Western Herbalism Properties
Relationships
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Botanical Description
She Mei is the whole plant of Duchesnea indica (Andrews) Focke (Rosaceae; also placed in Potentilla indica), the mock or Indian strawberry, a low, stoloniferous perennial herb of meadows, lawns, forest edges, and roadsides across China and much of temperate and subtropical Asia, naturalized worldwide. Slender, long, hairy runners root at the nodes to form mats. Leaves are alternate, long-petioled, palmately trifoliate, with obovate to rhombic, coarsely crenate-serrate leaflets 1.5–4 cm long. Solitary, axillary flowers borne on long peduncles have five bright yellow petals (distinguishing it from true Fragaria, which is white-flowered) and a leafy, three-toothed epicalyx larger than the calyx. The aggregate fruit is a globose, bright red, dry-fleshy receptacle 1–2 cm across studded with many small achenes; bland and insipid, not toxic. Plants are collected in summer or autumn, washed, and dried. Used to clear heat, resolve toxin, and cool blood.
Active Constituents
Brevifolin carboxylate
Phenolic acid (ellagitannin degradation product)Concentration: about 71.4 mg per 100 g dry weight, the most abundant of 27 phenolics quantified in one profile of the herb
The largest single phenolic measured when the herb was profiled by HPLC-ESI-MS/MS. It arises from the breakdown of the ellagitannins and is a reasonable marker for the polyphenol fraction as a whole, which is what most of the reported antioxidant activity of the herb tracks.
Ellagic acid
Ellagitannin-derived polyphenolConcentration: about 6.7 mg per 100 g dry weight, the lowest of the 27 phenolics quantified in the same profile
Frequently named as the signature compound of the herb, but the one quantitative profile available puts free ellagic acid at the bottom of the range rather than the top. Most of the ellagic acid skeleton in the plant is bound up in ellagitannins and ellagic acid glycosides rather than circulating free.
Ellagitannins
Hydrolysable tanninOne of the four phenolic groups identified in the herb alongside ellagic acid and its glycosides, hydroxybenzoic and hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives, and flavonols. As hydrolysable tannins they are the reason the drug behaves like a tannin-rich herb in the gut, and they are the source of the ellagic acid and brevifolin fragments detected on analysis.
Flavonol glycosides
FlavonoidThe fourth phenolic group described from the herb. Twenty-one of the 27 phenolics catalogued in that work had not previously been reported from the species at all, which is a fair measure of how recently this plant's chemistry was characterised and how thin the older literature on it is.
DIP-1 (neutral polysaccharide)
PolysaccharideConcentration: molecular weight 218.3 kDa; a water extract of the whole herb assayed at 32.6 ± 0.9% total polysaccharide
A purified neutral polysaccharide of glucose, galactose, mannose, glucosamine and arabinose in a roughly 18:14:1:0.4:0.8 ratio, without a triple-helical conformation. It scavenged hydroxyl, DPPH and ABTS radicals dose-dependently and inhibited SKOV-3 and HepG2 cells with IC50 values of 1.42 and 1.23 mg/mL. Those IC50 values are in the milligram per millilitre range, which is weak cytotoxicity and should not be read as anticancer potency.
⚠ Drug Interactions
Oral iron salts, and other drugs and supplements absorbed as polyvalent cations
She Mei is a tannin-rich herb: a water extract of the whole plant assayed at 12.2% total polyphenol, and the hydrolysable-tannin group is one of the four phenolic classes that dominate its profile. Hydrolysable tannins chelate iron and other polyvalent cations in the gut lumen, which is a general and well-characterised property of the class. No study has measured this for Duchesnea indica specifically, so the interaction is inferred from chemistry rather than observed, and is graded accordingly.
Clinical note: Separate the decoction from oral iron by about two hours. Do not treat this as a documented interaction; it is a class effect that has not been tested for this herb.
Cytotoxic chemotherapy and targeted anticancer agents
Duchesnea indica is used adjunctively in Chinese oncology practice and there is a body of preclinical work behind that use: extracts induced apoptosis and inhibited proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenic capacity in hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines and slowed tumour growth dose-dependently in mice, and a purified polysaccharide inhibited SKOV-3 and HepG2 cells in vitro. None of that is human data. No controlled study has measured whether the herb changes the exposure or the toxicity of any chemotherapeutic agent, and the standard dosing of 9 to 15 g dried or 30 to 60 g fresh has no toxicological characterisation behind it at all.
Clinical note: Disclose to the treating oncologist and do not present the herb as an evidence-based adjunct. Leave it out for patients in trials or on narrow-therapeutic-index agents.
Evidence Tier
Moderate evidence · 4 studiesRecorded 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
0
In vitro / animal
4
0 verified · 4 unverified
Show 4 studies
- Phenolic Profiling of Duchesnea indica Combining Macroporous Resin Chromatography (MRC) with HPLC-ESI-MS/MS and ESI-IT-MS
- Network Pharmacology Combined with Experimental Validation Reveals the Anti-tumor Effect of Duchesnea indica against Hepatocellular Carcinoma
- Characterization, antioxidant, and anticancer activities of a neutral polysaccharide from Duchesnea indica (Andr.) Focke
- Duchesnea indica (Andr.) Focke extracts exerted anti-inflammatory effect via inhibiting MAPK/ERK pathway in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells
Other / unclassified
0
Verified: design read from PubMed for a DOI that resolves to the cited paper Unverified: taken from the study's recorded description
Clinical Studies
Phenolic Profiling of Duchesnea indica Combining Macroporous Resin Chromatography (MRC) with HPLC-ESI-MS/MS and ESI-IT-MS
The first full phenolic profile of the herb. Total phenolics were enriched over a macroporous resin column and 27 compounds were identified, 21 of them for the first time in this species, falling into ellagitannins, ellagic acid and its glycosides, hydroxybenzoic and hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives, and flavonols. Quantified against standards, individual contents ranged from 6.69 mg per 100 g dry weight for ellagic acid to 71.36 mg per 100 g dry weight for brevifolin carboxylate. This is the source for essentially all the quantitative chemistry available on the drug.
Network Pharmacology Combined with Experimental Validation Reveals the Anti-tumor Effect of Duchesnea indica against Hepatocellular Carcinoma
Hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines treated with Duchesnea indica solutions at 1 and 2 mg/mL showed induced apoptosis and reduced proliferation, migration, invasion and angiogenic capacity, and tumour growth in 24 mice fell dose-dependently across low, medium and high dose groups with reduced CD34 and Ki67 staining. Transcriptome sequencing plus network pharmacology picked out 49 herb-regulated HCC genes, of which FOS, SERPINE1, AKR1C3 and FGF2 were the most significant. The compound identifications from mass spectrometry rest on database matching and should be treated as tentative.
Characterization, antioxidant, and anticancer activities of a neutral polysaccharide from Duchesnea indica (Andr.) Focke
A neutral polysaccharide, DIP-1, was purified from the herb by hot-water extraction, ethanol precipitation and column chromatography. It was 218.3 kDa, built from glucose, galactose, mannose, glucosamine and arabinose, with a straight hexahedral morphology and no triple helix. It scavenged hydroxyl, DPPH and ABTS radicals dose-dependently and inhibited SKOV-3 and HepG2 cells with IC50 values of 1.42 and 1.23 mg/mL. These are high concentrations by cell-culture standards and the result is a starting point for characterisation, not evidence of clinical antitumour activity.
Duchesnea indica (Andr.) Focke extracts exerted anti-inflammatory effect via inhibiting MAPK/ERK pathway in LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 cells
A water extract with alcohol precipitation assayed at 32.62 ± 0.91% total polysaccharide, 13.41 ± 0.18% reducing sugar, 1.07 ± 0.07% total flavonoid and 12.16 ± 0.27% total polyphenol. In LPS-stimulated RAW264.7 macrophages the extract reduced nitric oxide and malondialdehyde, raised SOD activity, lowered IL-6, IL-1 beta, iNOS, COX-2 and TNF-alpha transcript levels, and reduced ERK phosphorylation. Its radical-scavenging capacity was comparable to vitamin C on ABTS, DPPH and superoxide, though its total antioxidant capacity was lower.
Historical Texts
Ming Yi Bie Lu
Southern and Northern dynastiesZhi Wu Ming Shi Tu Kao
Qing dynastyReferences
- Fan M, Zhu M, Chen G, Guo M. Duchesnea genus: a comprehensive review of its phytochemistry, bioactivity, and pharmacology . Phytochemistry Reviews (2022) [DOI]
- Lim MJ, Park J, Lee MS, Choi SY, Yang H, Kim T, Na CS. Molecular Networking Reveals Antioxidant Properties and Phenolic Profiles of Four Rosaceae Seeds . Plants (2025) [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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