Li Pi (Pear Peel)

Li Pi (梨皮) is the fruit peel of Pyrus bretschneideri, P. pyrifolia or P. ussuriensis (white, sand or Ussurian pear). It is first recorded in the Diannan Bencao and compiled in Zhonghua Bencao. It is not a separate monograph in the current Chinese Pharmacopoeia; it is a folk and food-therapy item. Pear flesh is sweet, slightly sour and cool, stronger to clear the Lung, transform phlegm and generate fluid. Snow pear usually means the flesh of a milky cultivar, not the peel. Chen Pi is tangerine peel—acrid-bitter-warm, moving Qi and drying damp, a different drug. Write Li Pi or Sha Li Pi and peel an edible fresh pear; do not swap in waxed supermarket peel or aged tangerine peel.

According to Zhonghua Bencao, Li Pi is sweet, astringent and cool, enters the Lung, Heart, Kidney and Large Intestine channels, and acts to clear the Heart and moisten the Lung, downbear fire and generate fluid, and resolve sore toxin. It is used for summerheat vexing thirst, Lung-dryness cough, vomiting of blood, dysentery, scabies, and carbuncle on the back. Sweet-cool, moistening and slightly astringent—suited to summerheat damaging fluid and Lung dryness, not to Spleen-Stomach deficient cold or wind-cold phlegm-damp cough.

Peel ripe fruit in the ninth to tenth month; use fresh or sun-dried. Fresh peel more clearly moistens dryness and generates fluid; dried peel stores more easily and is slightly gentler. Cut strips go in the pot or are boiled as a drink; first- or late-decoction is not needed. Commercial pears are often waxed and may hold pesticide—wash thoroughly or choose unwaxed edible fruit. External use is pounded juice on sores; keep it out of the mouth and eyes.