Witnessed by: TCM · Western
Bogbean (Menyanthes trifoliata), of the Menyanthaceae family. Aquatic perennial with a thick creeping rhizome rooting in mud; native range: circumboreal — bogs, fens and shallow marsh margins across Europe, northern Asia and North America. Globally recognized as shui cai (睡菜) in Chinese, and buckbean, marsh trefoil, water trefoil, marsh clover, bog hop in English. The part used is leaf (herb). Three fleshy leaflets on a sheathed stalk, and racemes of pinkish-white flowers fringed with white hairs like frost; the leaf is bitter to an extreme.
In this cross-tradition database, we analyze how this substance operates across world medicine systems — tracking its traditional tastes, temperatures, tissue affinities, post-digestive effects, and planetary correspondences across Ayurveda, Unani, and Western herbalism.
BOGBEAN
IDENTITY
Name
- Common
- Bogbean
- Scientific name
- Menyanthes trifoliata L.
- Family
- Menyanthaceae
Form
- Part used
- leaf (herb)
PROPERTIES
Nature
Taste
how the plant declares itself on the tongue
- TCM
- bitter
- Western
- bitter (intensely bitter)
Temperature
TCM: cold
Western: cool
convergence: both {witness_count} witnesses read it a bitter, cooling drug
Affinity
where in the body it travels
Organs / channels
- TCM
- Stomach · Heart
- Western
- digestion · stomach · liver · joints
PRACTICE
Virtue
Actions
- TCM
- clears heat, strengthens the stomach and, as its name 'sleep vegetable' tells, quiets the spirit to settle restless sleep
- Western
- bitter tonic, stomachic, deobstruent, febrifuge and mild cathartic in larger dose
Cautions
- Contraindications
- diarrhoea, dysentery and colitis; irritable or inflamed conditions of the gut where a strong bitter would aggravate
- Toxicity
- large doses are purgative and may gripe and provoke vomiting
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