Abstract
Chinese crude drug 'To Bog Ryung' has been to cure chronic aperient, syphilis cough and diabetes. The botanical origin of the crude drug has never been studied pharmacognostically. To clarify the botanical origin of To Bog Ryung, the morphological and anatomical characteristics of the rhizomes of Smilax species growing in Korea, i.e. S. china, S. riparia var. ussuriensis, S. nipponica, S. sieboldii were compared. As a result, it was determined that To Bog Ryung was the rhizome of Smilax china and Smilax sieboldii.
