Field Thistle (Small Thistle Herb) xiǎo jì · 小蓟

Cirsium setosum (Willd.) Besser (aerial parts)

Nature and flavour. Sweet and bitter, cool; Heart and Liver systems.

Classed as cooling the blood and stopping bleeding, and as dispersing stasis and resolving toxin, with the added action of promoting urination. It is the smaller of the two thistles and the one the tradition reaches for when the bleeding is in the urine: the classical descriptions are of blood in the urine and of painful, difficult urination with blood, and that diuretic direction is what separates it from 大蓟 far more than potency does. The two are recorded together for bleeding read as heat in the blood, and separately once the site of the bleeding is what matters.