Bai Zhi

Angelica dahurica, commonly known as Dahurian angelica or by its Chinese name Bai Zhi, is a stout perennial or biennial herb in the family Apiaceae native to northeastern China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia and adjacent parts of Siberia, and widely cultivated in China for medicinal use. The plant grows from a thick, fleshy, aromatic, pale yellowish-brown taproot that is the part harvested medicinally; the root is conical to cylindrical, ringed near the crown and densely studded with small pale lenticels. The hollow, often purplish-tinged flowering stem rises 1 to 2.5 m tall and bears large, two- to three-pinnate compound leaves with broadly inflated sheathing petioles. Small white to greenish-white flowers are massed in large, hemispherical, many-rayed compound umbels at the stem apex in summer. The fruit is an ovate to nearly orbicular, dorsally flattened schizocarp with broadly winged lateral ribs, as is typical of the genus. The whole plant is strongly aromatic owing to its content of coumarins and essential oils.