Jiaogulan
A climbing vine of the gourd family, infused as an everyday drink in parts of southern China and in northern Thailand. It is unrelated to ginseng in every sense except the trade name — a cucurbit rather than an araliad — and the leaf is unusual among leaves for being sweet.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Gynostemma pentaphyllum
- Family
- Cucurbitaceae
- Part used
- Leaf, Aerial parts
- Origin
- Southern and central China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and mainland South-East Asia — forest margin and thicket
- Drunk in
- Guizhou, Guangxi, Shaanxi, Thailand
Character
Distinctly sweet on the front of the tongue with a green bitter finish — an unusual combination for a leaf and the reason it is drinkable without sugar. The oxidised material is rounder and less bitter than the green.
Notes: green leaf, hay, cucumber
History
Recorded in Chinese famine-food literature as something eaten in hard years long before it was anything to drink. Its commercial history begins with Japanese and Chinese research interest in the 1970s and 1980s, after which it was planted deliberately in Shaanxi, Guizhou and Guangxi. It went from a local plant to a traded one inside a generation, which is unusual and worth stating plainly.
How it is drunk
Drunk as a daily infusion in parts of Guizhou, Guangxi and southern Shaanxi, where it is a household item rather than a speciality. In Thailand it is sold as ปัญจขันธ์ and is grown in the north. Outside East Asia it is met almost entirely as a capsule or a powder.
Production
Vine and leaf are cut, sometimes rolled and oxidised to a darker material and sometimes simply dried green — the two give very different cups from the same field. Stem-heavy material is common and dilutes both the sweetness and the bitterness.
Preparation
Infusion · Cold infusion
Herbal infusion (tisane)
1–2 g/100 ml · 90–95 °C · 5 min
Category-typical practice rather than a measurement for this specific botanical. Most infusions are far more tolerant of a long steep than tea is.
What gets confused
“Southern ginseng” and “five-leaf ginseng” are trade names built on a resemblance in marketing rather than in botany. Panax ginseng is a different family entirely and TeaHQ holds it separately. The plant is variable across its range and material from different provinces tastes noticeably different, which the trade does not label.
Common mistakes
- Buying stem-heavy material. The sweetness is in the leaf.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. 132 of the 204 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Jiaogulan is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.