Dan Shen

Salvia miltiorrhiza (Dan Shen, red sage, Chinese sage) is a perennial herb in the Lamiaceae family, growing 30 to 80 centimeters tall from a striking dark brick-red to purplish-red, woody, branched root system that is the medicinal material and gives the herb its Chinese name (Dan Shen, literally cinnabar root). The erect, quadrangular, glandular-hairy stems bear opposite, odd-pinnately compound leaves with three to seven ovate to broadly ovate leaflets 1.5 to 8 centimeters long, with crenate margins and a softly pubescent undersurface. From late spring through summer, terminal and axillary verticillate racemes bear whorls of two-lipped, tubular violet-blue to bluish-purple flowers about 2 to 2.7 centimeters long, with a strongly arched upper lip and a three-lobed lower lip. The nutlets are small and brown. Native to China, growing on grassy hillsides and forest margins; widely cultivated in Sichuan, Shandong, and other provinces. Roots are harvested in spring or autumn, washed, and sun-dried for medicinal use.