Yue Ji Hua (Chinese Tea Rose Flower (Partially Opened))

Chinese Herb Actions

Chinese Herb Dosage

• What is the typical dosage of Yue Ji Hua?

  3–6 g is the range our record holds — a deliberately small dose, and the standard reference ranges sit around it. The part used is the flower gathered when it is just beginning to open, which is what our record’s “partially opened” note refers to.

  • Why half-opened — the aromatic and pigment constituents of a rose are at their fullest just as the flower opens and decline once it is fully blown. Harvesting at that stage is a quality specification, not a stylistic preference.
  • Aromatic handling — like other fragrant volatile-bearing flowers, it is not boiled hard or long; it is commonly added late to a decoction or steeped as an infusion.
  • Small dose is the norm — the low range reflects both potency relative to bulk and the caution against extended use noted below.

  Source: our own dosage record and the “partially opened” specification held in the record’s common name; dosage cross-referenced against published materia medica consensus and multiple online sources. Reference only — not a prescription.

Chinese Herb Contraindications & Cautions

• Are there cautions for Yue Ji Hua? Can it be taken long term?

  It is contraindicated in pregnancy, used with care where the Spleen and Stomach are deficient with loose stools, and it is not a herb for prolonged use. The first two are held in our own record; the third is the consistent advice of the reference literature and follows from what the herb is — a warm blood-mover taken in small doses.

  • Pregnancy — contraindicated per our record. This is the standard prohibition on blood-invigorating herbs, and it applies here in a way it does not to the gentler Mei Gui Hua.
  • Spleen and Stomach deficiency with diarrhoea — used with care per our record; the herb can loosen the stool further.
  • Not for prolonged or heavy use — the reference literature consistently cautions against extended courses and larger doses, on the ground that a persistent blood-mover consumes qi and blood over time. Our own record does not carry this caution in its cautions field; we are recording it here because it is well attested across sources and is the caution most often asked about for this herb. (Flagged for owner confirmation.)
  • Heavy or irregular bleeding — blood-invigorating herbs are inappropriate where menstrual bleeding is already excessive, and abnormal bleeding needs medical assessment rather than a herb.
  • Allergy — individual sensitivity to roses or Rosaceae pollen is possible with any rose material. A general note, not a documented finding for this herb.

  Source: our own cautions record (pregnancy; Spleen and Stomach deficiency with diarrhoea); the prolonged-use caution and category cautions per published materia medica consensus, cross-referenced against multiple online sources. Reference note, not a safety guarantee.

Chinese Herb Toxicity & Overdose

• Is Yue Ji Hua toxic?

  No. Our record’s toxicity entry reads “none noted,” the herb is not classed among the toxic materia medica, and we found no poisoning report, organ-toxicity finding or restricted listing for Rosa chinensis flowers. The flower is food-adjacent: it appears in surveys of common Chinese edible flowers and is drunk as a floral infusion, and the modern literature on it is dominated by food chemistry and antioxidant work rather than toxicology.

  The practical quality concerns are the ordinary ones for a dried flower — correct species, correct harvest stage, absence of pesticide residue and proper drying — rather than intrinsic hazard. As elsewhere, “none noted” reflects an absence of reports rather than the result of a completed safety evaluation.

  Source: our own toxicity record (“none noted”); edible-flower and antioxidant context per PMID 24621197, DOI 10.1111/1750-3841.12404. Neutral reference facts — not a safety guarantee.

Herb-Drug Interactions

• No clinical herb–drug interactions are documented for Yue Ji Hua. We found no interaction studies, case reports or pharmacokinetic work specific to this flower. The theoretical consideration usually raised for blood-invigorating herbs is concurrent use with anticoagulant or antiplatelet medication; for this herb that is a category-level precaution and not a documented finding, and no antiplatelet activity has been demonstrated for it in any study we could resolve.

  Patients taking prescription medication — anticoagulants in particular — should tell their prescriber about any herbal use. (Flagged for practitioner confirmation; reference information only.)

Western / Biomedical Research

Chinese Herb Clinical Studies & Research

Provided as research context — a summary of published biomedical study, not a therapeutic or medical claim.

• Is there modern research on Yue Ji Hua (Rosa chinensis)?

  Yes — a solid chemistry base and a small, recent animal literature, but nothing clinical for the traditional menstrual indication. The flower is chemically a polyphenol store: a 2005 mass-spectrometry study of dried Rosa chinensis flowers identified 36 phenolics — gallotannins, ellagitannins, quercetin and kaempferol glycosides and anthocyanins — and reported very strong radical-scavenging and antioxidant activity in three assays, concluding that the flavonols and hydrolysable tannins are likely the main active principles.

  • Flavonoid glycosides mapped in detail — a 2012 chromatography study separated twelve flavonoid glycosides from the dried flowers and identified four of them for the first time in this material, including quercetin and kaempferol glycosides, using carbon-13 NMR of the mixture alongside tandem mass spectrometry.
  • A flower polysaccharide and liver disease (mice) — a 2024 Carbohydrate Polymers study purified a pectin-like polysaccharide from the flowers of Rosa chinensis and reported that oral dosing at 50 mg/kg reduced inflammation, oxidative stress and fibrosis in a non-alcoholic steatohepatitis model, apparently by damping HMGB1/TLR4/NF-κB signalling, without affecting normal liver morphology. An isolated polysaccharide in an animal model, not the herb.
  • Flower extract and cognitive ageing (mice) — a 2026 Phytomedicine study of a cultivar flower long drunk as a herbal tea found its ethyl acetate fraction had the highest phenolic and flavonoid content, protected neuronal cells from peroxide injury, and in mice given D-galactose to model ageing reduced memory impairment and anxiety-like behaviour while shifting gut microbiota composition. The authors attribute the effect to antioxidant and ferroptosis-related pathways. Preclinical.
  • Aroma chemistry — the volatile profile of flowers from four Rosa chinensis cultivars has been characterised by two-dimensional gas chromatography, relevant to a medicinal valued for its fragrance and traditionally not boiled hard.
  • Edible-flower context — the species appears in comparative surveys of the phenolic content and antioxidant capacity of common Chinese edible flowers.

  All of it is chemistry, cells or rodents. Nothing here tests menstrual regulation, and nothing here supports a therapeutic claim. What the research does establish is that the traditional insistence on a fragrant, correctly harvested, gently prepared flower is chemically well founded.

  Sources: PMID 16366678, DOI 10.1021/jf052137k (36 phenolics and antioxidant activity of R. chinensis flowers); PMID 22749452, PMC 3393799, DOI 10.1016/j.chroma.2012.06.013 (flavonoid glycosides in the flowers); PMID 38710550, DOI 10.1016/j.carbpol.2024.122139 (flower polysaccharide in a steatohepatitis model); PMID 41747591, DOI 10.1016/j.phymed.2026.157942 (flower extract, cognitive ageing model in mice); PMID 37251764, PMC 10211245, DOI 10.3389/fpls.2023.1060747 (floral volatiles); PMID 24621197, DOI 10.1111/1750-3841.12404 (edible-flower phenolics and antioxidant capacity). Research context, not a therapeutic claim.

Chinese Herb Notes

• What is the difference between Yue Ji Hua and Mei Gui Hua?

  Two different roses doing two different jobs. Yue Ji Hua is Rosa chinensis and is primarily a blood-invigorating herb aimed at the menstrual cycle; Mei Gui Hua is Rosa rugosa and is primarily a gentle qi-mover that only harmonises blood. Our own records keep them in separate categories, and the difference in verb is the whole distinction: invigorating is stronger than harmonising.

  • Yue Ji Hua (this page) — Flos Et Fructus Rosae Chinensis. Sweet, warm; Liver only. Filed under herbs that invigorate blood and remove stagnation. For scanty or absent menstruation from blood stasis. Contraindicated in pregnancy.
  • Mei Gui Hua — Flos Rosae Rugosae. Sweet, slightly bitter, warm; Liver and Spleen. Filed under herbs that regulate the qi. For constraint: chest oppression, sighing, flank and epigastric distension, poor appetite, premenstrual breast tenderness. Widely drunk as a food-grade rose-bud tea. Our record holds no pregnancy contraindication for it.
  • Choosing between them — a frank blood-stasis menstrual presentation points here; constraint with digestive involvement points to Mei Gui Hua. They are not interchangeable, and the stronger of the two is the one on this page.

  Naming collision, flagged from this side too. Our Mei Gui Hua record carries the common name “Young Flower of Chinese Rose (Bud).” In ordinary botanical English, “Chinese rose” means Rosa chinensis — which is this herb, not that one. The Latin on the Mei Gui Hua record, Flos Rosae Rugosae, is correct; it is the English common name there that reads as though it described this plant. The published chemistry literature uses the same equation the other way round: a 2005 analysis of the phenolics of Rosa chinensis flowers introduces the species by its Chinese name, “Yuejihua.” Two separate entries in our materia medica, two separate categories, one English phrase that could send a reader to the wrong one. Flagged on both pages for owner decision; neither identity field has been changed.

  Latin field, flagged not changed. Our record gives the Latin as Flos Et Fructus Rosae Chinensis — flower and fruit. Everything else on the record describes the flower alone: the common name specifies a partially opened flower, the Chinese name ends in hua (flower), and the recorded actions and 3–6 g dose are the flower’s. Reference sources treat the flower as the medicinal, with the rose hip a separate item. We have left the field as held and flag it.

  How is Yue Ji Hua different from Jin Ying Zi?

  Entirely different: Jin Ying Zi is a rose hip, and it is astringent rather than moving. Our record for it reads Fructus Rosae Laevigatae — the fruit of Rosa laevigata, the Cherokee rose — sour and astringent, neutral, entering Bladder, Kidney and Large Intestine, filed among the herbs that astringe, stabilise and bind. It holds things in; Yue Ji Hua moves things out. Sharing the genus Rosa tells you nothing useful about how these are used.

  Why is it called the “monthly rose”?

  Because it flowers again and again through the season rather than once a year. The name our record translates as “Moon Season Flower” carries that sense of a flower that returns with each month — and it doubles as a description of the herb’s clinical use, which is the monthly cycle. It is one of the tidier name-and-function pairings in the materia medica.

  What is Yue Ji Hua combined with?

  Yue Ji Hua appears in no formula we currently hold, so the pairings below are the classical groupings recorded in the reference literature rather than links from our own formula data:

  • With Dang Gui and Chuan Xiong — for menstrual pain and irregular menstruation from blood stasis; all are in our materia medica.
  • With Xiang Fu — adding a qi-regulating herb where constraint underlies the stasis.
  • With Xia Ku Cao — for the neck swellings and scrofula indication our record records.

  (Traditional combination context, not treatment advice.)

  Source: our own herb records for Yue Ji Hua, Mei Gui Hua and Jin Ying Zi (Latin names, categories, natures, channels, cautions and the absence of formula links); the “Yuejihua” identification of Rosa chinensis per PMID 16366678, DOI 10.1021/jf052137k; combinations per published materia medica consensus, cross-referenced against multiple online sources.