Burdock Fruit
牛蒡子 · Niú Bàng Zǐ
Soothes hot sore throats and feverish skin breakouts
Properties
CoolingCooling botanicalPungent, Bitter
Concerns
What it does
Burdock fruit hits the sore-throat-and-fever combination that opens a lot of summer or warm-weather colds. In TCM, it cools wind-heat patterns and helps stuck rashes (like measles or hives) finish coming out so they can clear faster. It also moves things along the stool, so it's mildly laxative. Practitioners pair it with honeysuckle and forsythia for the early hours of an illness.
How to take it
Decoct 6–12g of crushed burdock fruit in water for 20 minutes. Drink 1 cup, 2x daily at the first sign of sore throat with fever. Usually used in formula.
Look for it in Yin Qiao San at the first sign of a sore-throat cold
Safety
- Cooling and mildly laxative. Skip if you have loose stools or cold-pattern digestion
- Skip during pregnancy
- Don't confuse with burdock root (gobo), which is food. The seed is the medicine
- Talk to your doctor before starting medicinal use, especially if you take medication
Where it comes from
Burdock fruit (Arctium lappa, niú bàng zǐ) is the dried seed of the same burdock plant whose long taproot shows up in Japanese cooking as gobo. The seeds are harvested in autumn after the spiky burrs ripen, then dried and crushed lightly before use. Classical texts use it for the sore-throat side of cold-pattern illnesses, and modern formulas like Yin Qiao San still rely on it. The seed is the medicinal part. The root is food.