Ban Xia

Pinellia ternata is a small herbaceous perennial in the Araceae, native to China, Korea, Japan and parts of the Russian Far East, where it grows in moist, shaded ground in woodlands, on cultivated land, in damp grassy places and as a common weed of crop fields. Plants grow 15-30 cm tall from a small, globose to depressed-globose underground tuber 1-2 cm across, pale buff outside and white inside. Each tuber produces one to three long-petiolate leaves; the petiole is often marked with brown spots and bears small bulbils near the base and at the junction with the leaflets. The blade is divided into three elliptic to lanceolate leaflets 3-10 cm long. The spadix bears small unisexual flowers, the lower females and the upper males, surrounded by a green, narrow spathe whose appendage is long and erect, projecting well above the spathe. The raw tuber is acrid and irritating and is processed before medicinal use.