Traditional Chinese doctors often use coptis to clear heat and remove toxins.
Tips
culture
Proverbially the bitterest thing there is: 比黄连还苦, 'more bitter than coptis', and the two-part saying 哑巴吃黄连，有苦说不出, 'a mute eating coptis: bitterness he cannot speak of', for suffering in silence.
history
The name means 'yellow and linked': the rhizome is bright yellow inside and grows in knobbly joints like a string of beads.
