Ding Xiang – Clove – Flos Caryophylli

Ding Xiang

English Name: clove

Pharmaceutical Name: Flos Caryophylli

Medica Category: Interior-Warming Herbs

Properties: Ding Xiang enters the Kidney, Spleen, and Stomach channels; it is acrid in nature and warm in temperature.

What is Ding Xiang?:

The Chinese Herb Ding Xiang is dried flower buds (commonly known as cloves) from a tree in the myrtle family (Eugenia carophyllata Thumb.) that grows in the Guangdong and Hainan provinces of China (but is also cultivated widely throughout Asia). When the flower buds emerge in the summer they are small and green; as they ripen into the fall, they change color to reddish-brown and become quite aromatic and spicy-fragrant—and it is at this time that cloves are harvested and dried for use as medicine (and as spice for food).

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Therapeutic Actions of Ding Xiang:

Ding Xiang warms the middle jiao and reverses abnormally rising stomach qi to treat nausea, vomiting, and hiccups caused by coldness.

Ding Xiang tonifies Kidney yang to address impotence as well as leukorrhea (w/clear discharge) that comes from cold in the uterus (due to Kidney yang deficiency).