The Herb Cabinet 本草

钩藤 gōu téng

Uncaria rhynchophylla · uncaria hook, cat's claw vine

Slightly Cold Sweet LiverPericardium

“A vine that climbs by little claws, cut into hook-bearing segments — the tradition uses the hooks to catch wind rising in the body: tremor, dizziness, the pounding irritable head.” — Lao Xinglin

What the tradition says

Gou teng climbs the southern forests on paired recurved hooks — little cat's claws on a smooth red-brown stem — and the pharmacy cuts it precisely at those nodes: the hooks are held to carry the strength. Its job is settling liver wind and draining liver heat: the dizzy, tremulous, irritable presentations — pounding temple headaches, tics and tremors, children's fever-convulsions in the classical texts — and always in partnership with tian ma, hook and tuber, the standard wind-settling pair of the headache room^[1].

What the research says

The vine's indole alkaloids — rhynchophylline above all — have a genuine pharmacology file: blood-pressure-lowering, sedative, and neuroprotective actions across laboratory and animal studies^[2], which sits neatly beside the traditional "descends rising wind and heat" job description. Human trials of the herb alone remain scarce; the famous tian-ma-and-gou-teng formula is studied (mostly within China) for hypertension with the usual small-trial caveats. Interesting chemistry, honest question marks.

Where to be careful

Its cold, descending nature makes it wrong for cold-pattern constitutions without heat signs^[1]; anyone on blood-pressure or sedating medication should treat concentrated extracts as active company for their prescriptions^[2]; and no relation, despite the shared nickname, to Peruvian cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa) — a different species with a different résumé.

In the pharmacy

Short smooth stem segments, each bearing one or two glossy hooks — more hooks, better grade. One craft rule every apprentice learns: gou teng goes in last. Long boiling destroys its alkaloids, so the hooks join the decoction for only the final five minutes^[1] — the rare drawer where the tradition's kitchen instinct and the chemist's degradation curve are the same sentence. Xiao Hu regards the hooks as professional equipment and has requested a set.

Reviewed 2026-08-26