Star and Moon Bodhi Seed

Huang teng is a clustered, climbing rattan palm with stems up to 25 m long that grows in lowland rain forest below 1000 m, often persisting in disturbed areas. Flora of China records it in Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan and from Bangladesh and Bhutan to Vietnam; Kew's Plants of the World Online gives the native range of Calamus melanochaetes as the eastern Himalaya to Taiwan, the Philippines (Palawan) and the Aru Islands. According to the Guokr article, most star and moon beads on the Chinese market come from Hainan, where people at Wuzhishan call the seed hong teng zi (红藤子). Its fruits are yellowish brown, globose to ellipsoid, up to 2 × 2 cm and covered with grooved scales.

Because the fruit is not perfectly round, the skin is peeled and the seed is ground and polished. The 'moon' is a round mark where the embryo lies; beads with the moon centred on the side (zheng yue, 正月) are rarer and priced higher. The 'stars' are pits of the ruminate endosperm into which the seed coat and part of the inner fruit wall extend; cut open, most of them do not reach the core. Seeds picked from the plant turn out white or greenish after processing, while seeds gathered after the fruit has fallen and rotted range from light yellow-brown to black. Seeds of several varieties of the plant are sold under other trade names such as jin chan zi (金蝉籽), yuan bao zi (元宝籽) and mo ni zi (摩尼籽).