A hidden world
If you want to get to know Taiwanese herbs, there’s no need to go to remote mountains: You can see them in abundance right in Taipei’s Xiangshan Park, near the Xiangshan Metro station. Dasha Lee, a well-known expert in herbs who teaches at Xinyi Community College, leads us on a one-hour stroll through the park, where we record the names of nearly 100 plants.
“In the world of herbs we need to humbly crouch down and carefully observe, for if we stand tall, everything looks the same.” So we hunker down near the ground. At first all we see is a stretch of green, but as we follow Lee through the park she points out and names various herbs: Oriental false hawksbeard (Youngia japonica), rabbit milkweed (Ixeris chinensis), Korean mock strawberry (Duchesnea chrysantha), Japanese mahonia (Gonostegia hirta), open-leaved marsh pennywort (Hydrocotyle batrachium), dwarf jo-jo (Soliva anthemifolia), broadleaf plantain (Plantago major), running mountaingrass (Oplismenus compositus), Asiatic pennywort (Centella asiatica), creeping woodsorrel (Oxalis corniculata), redflower ragleaf (Crassocephalum crepidioides), wood bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa), and on and on. As she proceeds we discover a variety of different shapes within this stretch of green, and like an image with increasing depth of field, they stand out from the greenery one after the other.
Lee explains them one by one: Open-leaved marsh pennywort used to be very important in treating neonatal jaundice, and is also a diuretic. Dwarf jo-jo looks like carrot leaves and can be mixed into salad like parsley or celery. Little ironweed (Vernonia cinerea), a plant with purple flowers, is used as a remedy for colds and flu. Asiatic pennywort is known in Chinese as “thunder root” because when there are thunderstorms extra roots grow out of its stem nodes. Wood bittercress has very long bean-pods and makes a delicious wild vegetable.
Oriental false hawksbeard is at its most tender in early February, and Lee says that it makes instant noodles taste great. Rabbit milkweed and Oriental false hawksbeard both have yellow flowers, both are members of the daisy family (Asteraceae), and they are similar in shape. But if we observe closely, we see that the stems and leaves of Oriental false hawksbeard all grow out of the root, while the leaves of rabbit milkweed emerge from the stem.
Lee tells us to pay attention to not just the ground, for Taiwanese herbs also grow as trees and shrubs. She asks us to look up at a subcostate crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia subcostata), whose trunk is so smooth that it is also called the “monkeys don’t climb” tree, from which our ancestors made a decoction to fortify their bones and tendons. There are also tall longan trees (Dimocarpus longan), of which “the roots are very tonic when stewed, and everyone knows longan is used in TCM to ‘tonify the blood.’”
You can identify herbs by sight, and touch the stems and leaves to get a sense of how smooth or hairy their surface texture is, or you can pick a leaf and tear or rub it to smell its aroma. Lee says: “When you are familiar with them, you will see them.”
Even a small herbal pharmacy has hundreds of different medicinal herbs.