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Not medical advice. The Atlas is not a substitute for a clinician who can examine you.

Cordyceps (Dong Chong Xia Cao 冬蟲夏草, Yartsa Gunbu)

Summer grass, winter worm, and the Himalaya's hardest currency

Evidence grade 2 of 5, Thin. Read how the Atlas grades evidence.

The clinical core is covered in the Ēnel supplement library, which grades cordyceps at grade 2, small and mixed human evidence concentrated on exercise performance and fatigue. Two points belong to the tradition side. First, nearly all trials use cultivated Cordyceps militaris or the fermented mycelium strain CS-4, now identified as Samsoniella hepiali, rather than wild O. sinensis, so the trial literature does not test the traditional drug. Second, the episode that built the modern reputation, the 1993 world records set by Ma Junren's runners and attributed by him to caterpillar fungus and turtle blood, ended with six of the seven athletes he later coached testing positive for EPO in 2000.

Reference only. Not medical advice.

What can go wrong

Wild material carries real contamination risk. Specimens accumulate arsenic and other heavy metals from plateau soils, and Chinese regulators halted the pilot programme permitting cordyceps in health foods in 2016 on arsenic grounds. Because price tracks weight, adulteration is endemic, from ordinary soil packed into the caterpillar to wire and lead inserted through the body, and from cheaper Cordyceps species substituted whole. Sourcing carries its own weight: the species is IUCN Vulnerable, China has protected it since 1999, and competition over collecting grounds has been lethal, with seven collectors killed in Manang, Nepal in 2009. The cultivated substitutes are safer, cheaper and better characterised, though they are not the same organism.

Ophiocordyceps sinensis infects the larva of a ghost moth as it feeds underground on the Tibetan Plateau, kills it slowly, fills the body with mycelium, and in spring pushes a slim dark stroma up through the soil above the caterpillar's head. Collectors on their knees look for that few centimetres of brown fruiting body against the alpine turf, then dig out the whole object, mummified insect and fungus together. Tibetan calls it yartsa gunbu, summer grass winter worm, and Chinese reverses the order to dong chong xia cao, winter worm summer grass, both names describing an organism that seems to change kingdom with the season. It has been taken for centuries as a tonic for stamina, the lungs and sexual vigour. It is now among the most valuable biological commodities on earth, it is a mainstay of the rural Tibetan cash economy, it is assessed as Vulnerable by the IUCN, and the material sold under its name in most of the world is a different species entirely.

A fungus that kills a ghost-moth caterpillar and fruits from its head, harvested on the Tibetan Plateau, worth more than gold by weight, and almost never what is in the capsule.

How it is supposed to work

Traditional theory places it as a tonic for Kidney yang and Lung yin, an unusual pairing that made it a remedy for exhaustion and chronic cough at once. Modern attention has focused on polysaccharides, adenosine and cordycepin, but the tradition's own fungus is a poor match for the pharmacology built around it. Xia and colleagues showed in 2017 that the cordycepin biosynthesis genes Cns1 to Cns4 are absent from O. sinensis and present in Cordyceps militaris, so the compound most associated with cordyceps is made by the substitute.

What people get wrong

  • Often saidCordyceps is an ancient Chinese medicine.

    ActuallyThe oldest known account is Tibetan. Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje described yartsa gunbu in the fifteenth century, and the fungus does not enter a Chinese materia medica until Wang Ang's Ben Cao Bei Yao of 1694, about two hundred years later. Chinese medicine received it from the plateau as an import.

  • Often saidThe cordyceps in your capsule is the Himalayan caterpillar fungus.

    ActuallyAlmost never. Affordable products contain cultivated Cordyceps militaris grown on grain, or the fermented mycelium strain CS-4, now identified as Samsoniella hepiali. Wild O. sinensis is among the most expensive biological commodities in the world and does not end up in an inexpensive bottle.

  • Often saidCordycepin is the active compound in the Tibetan fungus.

    ActuallyXia and colleagues showed in 2017 that O. sinensis lacks the cordycepin biosynthesis genes Cns1 to Cns4, which Cordyceps militaris carries. Earlier reports of cordycepin in O. sinensis appear to have come from unverified purchased samples. The compound and the tradition belong to different organisms.

Who profits, and who pushes back

  • Daniel Winkler

    neutralEthnomycologist, researcher on Tibetan plateau land use and the caterpillar fungus trade

    Winkler documents that caterpillar fungus became the backbone of the rural Tibetan cash economy, contributing on average about 40 percent of rural household cash income, and that 2004 production in the Tibet Autonomous Region was worth roughly 8.5 percent of regional GDP, more than the entire mining and industrial sector.

  • Kelly Hopping, PhD

    caveatsEcologist, Boise State University, lead author of the 2018 PNAS study on caterpillar fungus decline

    Hopping and colleagues reported that collectors across four countries described falling production, and attributed the decline to habitat change, warming and above all overexploitation, while noting that the relative weight of each cannot be separated because harvest monitoring across the range is very limited.

  • IUCN Red List (assessment by Zhu-Liang Yang)

    neutralGlobal conservation assessment authority

    The 2020 IUCN Red List assessment classifies Ophiocordyceps sinensis as Vulnerable, citing a population reduction greater than 30 percent over the past 15 years and a projected future reduction approaching 50 percent.

  • Yuxian Xia and colleagues

    skepticalFungal biologists, authors of the 2017 characterisation of cordycepin biosynthesis

    Xia's group characterised the cordycepin biosynthesis pathway and found the genes Cns1 to Cns4 present in Cordyceps militaris and absent in Ophiocordyceps sinensis, indicating that the wild Himalayan fungus does not make the compound most often cited as its active constituent.

Where the research comes from

Most of the published research on this comes from one place. 100% of it is from Endemic to the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya between 3,000 and 5,000 m, harvested in China, Nepal, Bhutan and India, traded worldwide.. Findings that no unrelated group has reproduced are weaker than the study count makes them look.

Share of published research by country of origin.
PlaceShare of published research
Endemic to the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya between 3,000 and 5,000 m, harvested in China, Nepal, Bhutan and India, traded worldwide.100%

How we got here

The name genealogy runs Tibetan first: yartsa gunbu is recorded in the fifteenth century, and Chinese dong chong xia cao is the same metaphor with the seasons swapped, arriving in print in 1694. Western taxonomy has moved it twice, from Berkeley's Sphaeria sinensis of 1843 to Cordyceps sinensis under Saccardo, and to Ophiocordyceps sinensis in Sung's 2007 revision, but the supplement trade still sells under the retired Cordyceps sinensis, which conveniently blurs the line with the cultivated species it usually contains. The commercial category 'cordyceps' now denotes three distinct organisms: wild O. sinensis, cultivated Cordyceps militaris, and the CS-4 mycelium reclassified as Samsoniella hepiali. Nepali yarsagumba and Bhutanese yartsa goenbub are regional renderings of the Tibetan name, not separate products.

The written record begins in Tibet, not China. Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, a physician who lived from 1439 to 1475, gave yartsa gunbu its first known description in his Instructions on a Myriad of Medicines, and the name itself is first recorded there. Chinese medicine received it later: the fungus does not appear in a Chinese materia medica until Wang Ang's Ben Cao Bei Yao of 1694, roughly two centuries after the Tibetan text, arriving as an exotic import from the plateau rather than as a native Chinese drug. Western science met it in 1843, when Miles Berkeley described it as Sphaeria sinensis, later moved to Cordyceps by Saccardo and to Ophiocordyceps by Sung and colleagues in 2007. For most of that history it was a regional tonic of modest reach. Its transformation into a luxury commodity is a phenomenon of the last thirty years.

  1. 15th c.Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje (1439 to 1475) gives yartsa gunbu its first known written description, in Tibetan, as an aphrodisiac and strengthener
  2. 1694Wang Ang's Ben Cao Bei Yao gives the fungus its first entry in a Chinese materia medica, two centuries after the Tibetan account
  3. 1843Miles Berkeley describes it for Western science as Sphaeria sinensis; Saccardo later moves it to Cordyceps, and Sung and colleagues to Ophiocordyceps in 2007
  4. 1993Ma Junren's runners break three world records at China's National Games and their coach credits high-altitude training, turtle blood and caterpillar fungus, launching global demand
  5. 2004Tibet AR production of 50.5 tonnes is worth roughly 1.8 billion yuan, about 8.5% of regional GDP, exceeding the whole mining and industrial sector (Winkler)
  6. 2009Seven collectors are killed in a dispute over harvesting grounds in Manang district, Nepal
  7. 2018 to 2020Hopping's PNAS study documents decline from warming and overharvesting; the IUCN Red List assesses O. sinensis as Vulnerable

How it is understood

Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje's fifteenth-century Tibetan account frames yartsa gunbu as an aphrodisiac and a strengthener, in a section titled An Ocean of Aphrodisiacal Qualities. Pastoralist practice was simpler, the whole dried object simmered in broth, stewed with a duck or a chicken, or steeped in liquor, eaten whole. Its ambiguity is part of its meaning, animal in winter and plant in summer, and the transformation itself was read as evidence of potency. Collecting season empties Himalayan villages and schools for weeks each spring.

At a glance

Species
Ophiocordyceps sinensis, formerly Cordyceps sinensis (Berk.) Sacc.
Host and habitat
Ghost moth larvae (Hepialidae) at 3,000 to 5,000 m on the Tibetan Plateau
First described
Tibetan, Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorje, 15th c.; Chinese, Wang Ang, 1694
Rural economy
About 40% of rural cash income and 8.5% of Tibet AR GDP (Winkler, 2004 figures)

What this entry does not yet cover

What follows is unfinished work on our side, not a finding about Cordyceps (Dong Chong Xia Cao 冬蟲夏草, Yartsa Gunbu). A short entry is not a safe entry.

  • Cost and market. We have not documented what it sells for or who sells it.
  • Supply chain. We have not mapped where it is made.
  • Who uses it. We have not documented the user groups.
  • What could change. No forward-looking summary yet.
  • How it compares. We have not set it against the alternatives.
  • Children and teenagers. We have not checked what is known about younger people.
  • What people take it for. We have not catalogued the claims made for it.

Sources