Medicinal Herbs

Cordyceps Extract

Cordyceps militaris

Đông trùng hạ thảo, cordyceps, is not a plant but a fungus that grows on the buried larva of a lepidopteran insect. Through the winter it fills the caterpillar's body; by summer a slender club three to six centimetres long has pushed above the soil, its base still joined to the insect's head, and larva and fungus are dug out together. The wild material of the old trade is Cordyceps sinensis, gathered in June and July, washed, sun-dried, sprayed with spirit, dried again and tied into bundles of ten to fifteen with red thread; Vietnam has long imported it from the damp forests of Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet.