Notoginseng

In the mountain provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, notoginseng earned a reputation as the herb you reached for first when blood was spilled, whether from a battlefield wound, a training injury, or a bad fall. Traditional Chinese medicine has used the root for centuries to support healthy circulation and to address bruising, swelling, and minor wounds, taken internally and applied to the skin alike. The sixteenth century physician Li Shizhen praised it in his great herbal compendium as more precious than gold, and generations of martial artists have kept a pinch of the powdered root on hand for exactly that reason. It grows alongside its better known cousin, Asian ginseng, and traditional herbalists have long considered it a tonic for stamina and resilience as well as a wound herb.