01 Grass Encyclopedia
Latin name: Orobanche coerulescens. Orobanche comes from the Greek orobos (bitter wild pea) + ancho (strangle, suffocate), which is the name of the genus; coerulescens means "sky blue".
Family: Ledangaceae, Ledang family
Common names: cistanche, one-root grass, rabbit crutch, North Aledan
Identifying features: biennial or perennial parasitic herb; unbranched stem; ovate lanceolate leaves, densely covered with long spider-like woolly wool on the outside and edges of bracts and calyxes; panicle-like inflorescence; corolla navy, blue-purple or lilac; ovate capsules.
Distribution: Northeast China, North China, Northwest China, shandong, Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet.
Habitat: Grows on sand dunes, hillsides and ditch-edge meadows at altitudes of 850–4000 m.
02 Grass Resources
Medicinal resource plants, due to their special growth mode, narrow distribution range, and parasitic plants, coupled with indiscriminate mining and digging year by year, wild Ledang resources have been seriously damaged, and are endangered species under national third-level protection.
03 Grass Culture
Lidang is a parasitic plant that mainly parasitizes the roots of plants of the genus Artemisia in the family Asteraceae. The Northern Song Dynasty "Kaibao Materia Medica" described it as "Ledang, sweet taste, warm, non-toxic", its plant shape is peculiar, and cistanche is the same as the column, folk often used as a substitute for cistanche, people regard it as an immortal "sacred grass", so it is also called "immortal grass".
Source: Forest Grass News