Why the five-flavour berry?

Because its Chinese name, wu wei zi, means the seeds of five flavours: sour, sweet, bitter, pungent and salty. All five can be tasted by chewing a single dried berry, from the skin to the seed.

What is the difference between Schisandra chinensis and Schisandra sphenanthera?

Schisandra chinensis is the northern vine: Amur, Manchuria, Korea. Schisandra sphenanthera, the nan wu wei zi, grows further south in China and bears smaller berries. The two sometimes cross paths on the Chinese market.

It is the Korean name for schisandra, and for the drink made from it: the berries soaked overnight in cold water, sweetened with honey, served chilled.

What precautions apply to schisandra?

Avoid during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Take care with an ulcer or reflux. Medical advice first when on treatment, in particular tacrolimus, immunosuppressants or anticoagulants, with epilepsy, and for children.

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Schisandra · the five-flavour berry

Schisandra chinensis, wu wei zi, the red vine of the Amur and Manchurian forests. The five flavours of a single berry, Korean omija drunk cold, the sable trail of the Nanai hunters.

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Schisandra chinensis is a vine. It climbs the trunks of the mixed forests of the Amur, Manchuria, Korea and northern Japan, and in autumn lets clusters of red berries hang down, glossy, packed tight like redcurrants. Dried, they turn red-brown and wrinkled, each one around one or two yellow-brown seeds, smooth as miniature beans.

Wu wei zi, the seeds of five flavours

In Chinese it is called wu wei zi (五味子): wu, five, wei, flavour, zi, the seed. The seeds of five flavours. Chewed slowly, a single dried berry crosses the mouth in less than a minute: sour first, in the skin, then the sweetness of the pulp, the bitter and the pungent of the seed, and a salty finish. The Chinese herbals have long described it this way: the skin and flesh sweet and sour, the kernel pungent and bitter, and over it all, a taste of salt.

In Chinese thought, each of the five flavours answers to one of the five phases, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. A berry that carries all five is a small map of the world held between two fingers.

The Shennong Ben Cao Jing, the classic materia medica attributed to the Divine Farmer and compiled under the Han, places wu wei zi among its superior plants, shang pin, alongside ginseng and lingzhi.

A vine of the Amur

In Russian it is called limonnik, the little lemon tree: crushed, its leaves and bark smell of lemon. In Japan it is chōsen gomishi, the gomishi of Korea. The Russian botanist Nikolai Turczaninow described it for European science in the first half of the nineteenth century; the Frenchman Henri Baillon gave it its current name in 1868. It has its own family, the Schisandraceae.

It likes damp woodland edges and valleys, winds itself around whatever it finds, flowers in spring with small, fragrant, creamy-white flowers, and withstands very cold winters. It is grown today in China, Korea, Russia and as far as Central Europe. The Chinese market also knows a neighbouring southern species, Schisandra sphenanthera, the nan wu wei zi, which is smaller.

On the sable trail

The Nanai live on the banks of the Amur and the Ussuri; nineteenth-century Russians called them the Goldi. Their hunters carried the dried berries and seeds of the vine on the sable trail, through the long days of tracking in the winter forest.

In the twentieth century, the Soviet pharmacologists working around the word adaptogen, coined by Nikolai Lazarev in 1947, took an interest in the vine of the Far East, as they had in eleuthero. Alexander Panossian and Georg Wikman traced this Russian history in 2008.

The omija of Korea

In Korea the berry is called omija, the same name as in Chinese: five flavours. There they make omija-cha: the dried berries soak overnight in cold water, and the water takes on a bright pink colour and a taste that hovers between sour and sweet. Sweetened with honey, served chilled with sliced fruit, it becomes omija-hwachae, the drink of hot days.

Ways with the berry

The traditions that drink schisandra know it in four forms:

Chewed: a few dried berries, slowly, to follow the five flavours one after another.
Cold, the Korean way: a handful of berries in a litre of cold water, overnight in the fridge, then strained and sweetened with honey.
As an infusion: a teaspoon of crushed berries in a cup of water just off the boil, for about ten minutes.
As a decoction, the Chinese way: the crushed berries simmer for about twenty minutes; the liquid comes out red-brown and frankly sour.

In Russia and China it is also macerated in grain spirit or rice wine.

Schisandra is not in the House catalogue. We tell its story for its own sake, because it belongs to the same forest as eleuthero and Sagan Dalya.

Precautions

Pregnancy and breastfeeding: avoid.
Stomach ulcer or reflux: take care, the berry is very sour.
Ongoing treatments: schisandra can change the way the liver processes certain medicines, in particular tacrolimus and other immunosuppressants, as well as anticoagulants. Medical advice first.
Epilepsy: avoid without medical advice.
Children: medical advice first.

When in doubt, your doctor before the plant.

Sources

Shennong Ben Cao Jing, transl. Yang Shouzhong, The Divine Farmer's Materia Medica, Blue Poppy Press, 1998.
Alexander Panossian and Georg Wikman, "Pharmacology of Schisandra chinensis Bail.: an overview of Russian research and uses in medicine", Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2008: the Nanai hunters, Soviet research.
Dan Bensky, Steven Clavey and Erich Stöger, Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica, Eastland Press, 3rd ed., 2004.
David Winston and Steven Maimes, Adaptogens (2007).