Bai Zi Ren

Platycladus orientalis, the Chinese arborvitae, is an evergreen coniferous tree in the family Cupressaceae, native to northern and northeastern China, Korea, and the Russian Far East, and widely planted across temperate Asia. Mature trees reach 15-20 m tall with a dense, conical to broadly rounded crown and reddish-brown, fibrous bark that exfoliates in vertical strips. The branchlets are flattened into vertical, fan-like sprays clothed in tiny, scale-like, decussate leaves that are bright green and aromatic when crushed. The plant is monoecious, bearing small yellowish male cones and bluish-green female cones at the branch tips. The female cones mature in a single season into ovoid, fleshy, glaucous structures 1.5-2.5 cm long bearing prominent recurved horn-like processes on each scale, opening at maturity to release wingless or narrowly winged ovoid seeds. The seed (Bai Zi Ren) is the medicinal part, collected in autumn.