# Yin Chen Hao

> Yin Chen Hao (茵陳蒿), also sold as Yerba Lena Yesca, is ''Artemisia capillaris — a mugwort relative that is one of the principal liver medicines of Chinese herbal practice. It is frequently marketed in…

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Last updated: 2026-10-20
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**Yin Chen Hao** (茵陳蒿), also sold as **Yerba Lena Yesca**, is ***Artemisia capillaris*** — a mugwort relative that is one of the principal liver medicines of Chinese herbal practice. It is frequently marketed in the West as a psychoactive or "legal high" herb. **That marketing is wrong.** The plant's documented pharmacology is hepatoprotective and choleretic; it is a liver medicine sold under a recreational label.

## Naming and the mix-up

The Spanish trade name *Yerba Lena Yesca* circulates in smoke-shop and herbal-incense channels, where *Artemisia* species are routinely conflated with one another and with genuinely psychoactive plants. *A. capillaris* is neither *A. absinthium* (wormwood) nor *A. vulgaris* (mugwort), and shares neither's reputation. Anyone buying it for the advertised effect is buying something else entirely — which is a good reason for the material to be described accurately somewhere.

## Constituents

- **Scoparone** (6,7-dimethoxycoumarin) — the best-characterised active; a coumarin with hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory and vasorelaxant activity in the literature.
- **Capillarisin** — a chromone, associated with the choleretic (bile-promoting) action.
- **Chlorogenic acid** — a widely distributed polyphenol, antioxidant.
- **Quercetin** — flavonoid; among many other activities, a reported weak modulator of endocannabinoid-adjacent enzymes.
- Volatile essential-oil fraction, largely monoterpene.

## Pharmacology

The traditional indication is jaundice and damp-heat liver patterns, and the modern pharmacology lines up with it unusually well: scoparone and capillarisin between them account for the choleretic and hepatoprotective effects that the classical indication describes. This is one of the cases where the traditional category and the enzyme-level account point at the same organ.

## Vaporisation

Scoparone volatilises at approximately **200 °C**, at the top of the sesquiterpene band and the bottom of the flavonoid band. The monoterpene essential-oil fraction comes off from **155–175 °C**. Both release effectively; what they release is a liver medicine.

## Cautions

Bile-promoting herbs are contraindicated in biliary obstruction. Any hepatically active herb warrants care alongside hepatically metabolised medication, and this one is taken specifically *for* liver effect. Coumarins as a class deserve attention in anyone on anticoagulants — noting that the anticoagulant coumarins are a specific subgroup and scoparone is not among them, the class caution is still the conservative starting point.

**This entry exists in part as a correction.** A plant sold for an effect it does not have will be taken by people who then attribute something else to it, and a plant with real hepatic activity should not be taken casually because a label undersold it.

See also: Imphepho · Stack Substances · Cannabinoid Oilahuasca