See text Actaea, commonly called baneberry, bugbane and cohosh, is a genus of flowering plants of the family Ranunculaceae, native to subtropical, temperate and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia and North America.

The genus was redefined to include Cimicifuga and Souliea in the 1990s[2] (Compton et al. 1998, Compton & Culham 2002, Gao et al. 2006, RHS Plant Finder, 2007) based on combined evidence from DNA sequence data, similarity in biochemical constituents and on morphology returning it to the original Linnean concept of the genus.

Other botanists (e.g., Hoffman 1999, Wang et al. 1999, Lee & Park 2004, Wang et al. 2009[4]) reject this merger because only one group (Actaea) have fleshy fruit while the remainder have dry fruit.

Children have been poisoned by eating the waxy, shiny red or white berries.

The synonym Cimicifuga, meaning 'bed bug repellent', has traditional uses: for example, in pharmacology, Cimicifugae rhizoma is a herbal medicine Sheng ma, a Chinese preparation which may be extracted from the roots of A. dahurica and A. heracleifolia.