A perennial herb of the buttercup family, Ranunculus ternatus Thunb. (see Figure 2-55). The tuberous root is used as medicine. Containing small buttercup lactone, protobionin, eicosanoic acid, myristic acid eighteen alkyl esters, stigmasterol, β-sitosterol, sugars and alkaloids. Taste bitter, pungent, flat. There is a small poison. It has the function of dispersing knots and reducing swelling. Used in the treatment of tuberculosis, lymph nodes, lymphadenitis, pharyngitis, mammary gland hyperplasia and a variety of cancers, lymphoma and so on. Mostly wild, distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River in China, Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Taiwan, Henan, Hubei, Guangxi, Guizhou and other provinces and autonomous regions. Due to a wide range of therapeutic effects, the need for a larger amount of higher market prices, triggering the production area farmers actively digging, so that the wild resources are decreasing, is the State Administration of Medicine decided to focus on the development of one of the 63 kinds of shortage of traditional Chinese medicinal materials, the urgent need for artificial cultivation.

Figure 2-55 Morphology of Cat's claw herb plant