Fox Nuts -- Euryale Ferox (I believe)

[Guest guest]

The problem with trying to find herbs by english names is that the

transliteration can be

pretty arbitrary, and/or Chinese herbalists only use the Chinese (Mandarin,

usually)

names. This -seems- to be the proper name for it (Chieh shek might be

Cantonese):

 

qian shi ??

 

 

http://alternativehealing.org/euryale_ferox.htm

 

This site is a Chinese herbal dictionary, and they call it " Prickly lily seeds. "

 

There are a zillion herb shops in NY's chinatown, and SF's too, I'd imagine. In

NY they're

often opening & closing due to the recent explosion in rent & from competition.

 

You could try these guys to order (or they might know where to find it), or try

the NY herb

shops again. They're pretty well stocked:

http://www.eastearthtrade.com/

 

Cheers,

Jeff

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Jeff. With the additional info you provided, I was able to

find more. It's also called Fox nut barley.

 

If he does a Google for " qian shi fox nut " , it will throw up a

number of places where he can order the herb.

 

> The problem with trying to find herbs by english names is that the

transliteration can be

> pretty arbitrary, and/or Chinese herbalists only use the Chinese

(Mandarin, usually)

> names. This -seems- to be the proper name for it (Chieh shek might

be Cantonese):

 

I want to use your paragraph as a starting point about more on names

in herbalism for the readers on the list who are new to herbalism in

general and TCM herbalism in particular.

 

Chinese doesn't use an alphabet. It uses idiograms to represent

ideas. Pinyin is the rendering of Chinese words into the English

alphabet. The problem is, pinyin is not standardized because of

differences in dialect. For example, one will see Dong Quai also

listed as Tang Gui.

 

This can be as confusing to the Chinese as to other people. China

has a number of dialects, and the Chinese who speak one dialect

frequently can not understand those speaking another.

 

The weird thing is that often the Chinese characters are the same

regardless of dialect. When Chinese who speak different dialects are

having trouble understanding each other, they frequently will write

the characters for the words. One suggestion for getting around the

pinyin dialect problem is to use the Chinese characters for the

herbs when one goes into an herb shop. Hand the herbalist a piece of

paper with the name of the herb written in the Chinese characters.

 

Another way around the pinyin problem is the use of Latin

pharmaceutical names. Many if not most sellers of Chinese herbs in

the US know the Latin pharmaceutical names. In fact they'd often

rather have the Latin pharmaceutical name than the pinyin names.

 

Pharmaceutical names will always include the part of the plant (or

animal or whatever) used. For example " Semen " is seeds. Radix =

root. Rhizoma = rhizome. Flos = flower. Herba = all of the plant

growing above the ground. Etc. This is important because sometimes

only part of the plant will have the healing properties needed. In

some cases the part will be critical because different parts of the

plant may have very different properties. For example, the

properties (and uses) of Herba Ephedrae are the opposite of Radix

Ephedrae. In pinyin the former is Ha Huang and the latter is Ma

Huang Gen. Get those two mixed up, and one can do some serious

damage.