Qing Xiang Zi looks like gunpowder or poppy seeds.
It is used to drain liver fire and wind heat, just as gunpowder releases a fire. It is also sweet by nature, like poppy seeds. When I was a little girl my sister told me that poppy seeds were spent coffee grounds. I wouldn’t eat poppy seeds after that for many years until one day I realized what a stupid thing she had told me. That wasn’t so sweet, but it was slightly cold – just like Qing Xiang Zi. If I remember correctly, the word Qing in Chinese means green-blue, the color associated with the liver. And this is the organ channel that Qing Xiang Zi goes to. Zi means seed, and it is indeed a seed. They are cool looking, which is appropriate, because they are also cool by nature.
When the liver is on fire, the fire will overflow upwards, showing in your eyes which become red and painful, obstructing your literal, and figurative, vision. Taking this cool gunpowder seed will help to improve your vision, by removing the fire. How does it do this? I don’t know. Maybe it helps by attracting the fire to itself, like gunpowder does, and then releasing it in a big blast.
It is also good for Liver yang rising, another fiery condition that will create heat in your eyes, and Qing Xiang Zi is also good for removing that deficient heat—causing hypertension—as well.
The Latin name for the seed is “Celosia argentea seed.” Celosia is actually a beautiful flower that is often flaming red in color and likes to grow in full sun – perhaps this is why it knows how to cool things down. It is also known by the name cockscomb. The seed is traditionally harvested in the fall, after the flowers are done blooming and go to seed.
The main chemical ingredient of the seed is celosiaol, which dilates the pupil of the eye.
Three to fifteen grams should be taken, decocted in water or tea.
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