5D Library › Ecological Cultivation, Stress-Induced Polysaccharide Synthesis and Fresh-Extract Rheology of Dendrobium officinale · 中文
Chapter 7 The Classics
The oldest entry
Source text
石斛味甘，平，主伤中，除痹，下气，补五藏，虚劳羸瘦，强阴，久服厚肠胃，轻身延年。(佚名, n.d.)
Shihu is sweet in taste and neutral. It governs damage to the middle, removes impediment, sends qi downward, supplements the five viscera, [treats] vacuity taxation and emaciation, and strengthens yin. Taken for a long time, it thickens the stomach and intestines, lightens the body and prolongs the years. (Shennong Bencao Jing)
The Shennong Bencao Jing, compiled around the end of the Han dynasty from older material, lists shihu among its superior drugs, those that can be taken for a long time. The name covers several Dendrobium species; textual studies argue that the best shihu of the classical sources corresponds mainly to D. officinale and D. huoshanense (赵菊润 et al. 2022). The entry describes a tonic for weakness and wasting, not a cure for a particular disease, and it says nothing about sleep.
A solid stem, a sticky juice
Source text
石斛细若小草，长三四寸，柔韧，折之如肉而实。今人多以木斛浑行，医工亦不能明辨。(寇宗奭 1116)
Shihu is as fine as a small grass, three or four inches long, soft and tough; broken, it is like flesh and solid. People today often pass off mushu in its place, and physicians cannot tell them apart. (Kou Zongshi, Bencao Yanyi, 1116)
Source text
出江南霍山，形较钗斛细小，色黄而形曲不直，有成球者，彼土人以代茶茗，云极解暑醒脾，止渴利水，益人气力……霍石斛嚼之微有浆，黏齿，味甘微咸，形缩者真。(赵学敏 1765)
[Huo shihu] comes from Huoshan in Jiangnan. It is smaller than chaihu, yellow and crooked rather than straight, and some is rolled into balls. The local people use it in place of tea, and say that it greatly relieves summer heat, wakes the spleen, stops thirst, promotes urination and increases strength … Genuine huo shihu, when chewed, gives a little juice that sticks to the teeth, tastes sweet and slightly salty, and is shrunken in form. (Zhao Xuemin, Bencao Gangmu Shiyi, 1765)
These two passages describe quality by touch and taste. Kou Zongshi distinguishes the true herb, solid and fleshy when broken, from the hollow mushu used as a substitute. Zhao Xuemin’s test for genuine huo shihu is that the chewed stem gives a juice that sticks to the teeth. In modern terms both describe stems rich in mucilage: a dense tissue full of the glucomannan of Chapter 2, which on chewing makes the viscous, shear-thinning liquid of Chapter 4. The sticky-teeth test is a rough viscosity measurement, made with the mouth.
Note
Huo shihu, from Huoshan in Anhui, is now identified with D. huoshanense, a different species from D. officinale. Zhao’s description of local tea use refers to it, not to D. officinale. The Song dynasty Bencao Tujing records shihu from Wenzhou and Taizhou in Zhejiang among other places (赵菊润 et al. 2022); Yandang Mountain lies in Wenzhou’s Yueqing, and in a modern survey Yueqing samples had the highest polysaccharide content of the regions compared (Tan et al. 2023).
Claims without a source
Two claims often repeated about D. officinale could not be traced to the texts. The first is that the Daoist canon (Daozang) ranks shihu first among “nine immortal herbs”. Articles that make this claim give no edition, chapter or passage, and no such list was found; the book treats it as a modern saying. The second is the attribution to Zhao Xuemin of the phrase “clears vacuity heat” for shihu; the passage verified above speaks of relieving summer heat and thirst, and the book quotes only that.
Old words, new questions
“Thickens the stomach and intestines” invites a modern question: do Dendrobium polysaccharides protect the lining of the gut? Pharmacological studies on this question, reviewed in Chinese, are mostly in animals and cells (“石斛「厚肠胃」相关功效药理学研究及应用进展” 2016); they suggest directions for research but do not show that the classical claim holds in people. The classics say nothing about sleep or body temperature, and the hypothesis of Chapter 5 is the author’s, not theirs.
Hypothesis · not established
Not established. The “sticky juice” test of Zhao Xuemin can be made quantitative: the apparent viscosity at 50 s⁻¹ of a standard aqueous extract of fresh stem (for example, 10 g crushed in 100 mL, heated to 95 °C for 10 minutes) correlates with stem polysaccharide measured by the pharmacopoeia method, with a correlation of at least 0.7 across 30 batches. If the correlation is below 0.5, the hypothesis is refuted and the simple viscosity test is not a useful screen.
References
Fan, Y. (2026). Ecological Cultivation, Stress-Induced Polysaccharide Synthesis and Fresh-Extract Rheology of Dendrobium officinale: CAM Photosynthesis, VPD Water Control, Growth-Differentiation Balance and Nocturnal Core-Body-Temperature Regulation [铁皮石斛的生态栽培、逆境多糖合成与鲜汁流变学] (Version 1.0.0). 5D Library. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23729740 · Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).