[2] The scientific species name honors Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, who, as president of the National Geographic Society, helped to fund an expedition in the 1930s to find the living plant in China where it was already being cultivated.

Luóhàn (羅漢) is a shortened form of āluóhàn (Chinese: 阿羅漢), which is an old transliteration of the Indian Sanskrit word arhat (prakrit: arahant).

In early Buddhist traditions, a monk who becomes enlightened is called an arhat who attains the "fruition of arhatship" (Sanskrit: arhattaphala).

[5] The first report in England on the herb was found in an unpublished manuscript written in 1938 by G. Weidman Groff and Hoh Hin Cheung.

[4] The report stated the fruits were often used as the main ingredients of "cooling drinks" as remedies for hot weather, fever, or other dysfunctions traditionally associated with warmth or heat (e.g., inflammation).

Groff mentioned that, during a visit to the American ministry of agriculture in 1917, the botanist Frederick Coville showed him a luo han guo fruit bought in a Chinese shop in Washington, DC.

[4] One analysis of 200 candidate genes of Siraitia grosvenorii revealed five enzyme families involved in the synthesis of mogroside V: squalene epoxidases, triterpenoid synthases, epoxide hydrolases, cytochrome P450s, and UDP-glucosyltransferases.

It is grown primarily in the far southern Chinese province of Guangxi (mostly in the mountains near Guilin), as well as in Guangdong, Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangxi.

This limits the use of the dried fruits and extracts to the preparation of diluted tea, soup, and as a sweetener for products that would usually have sugar or honey added to them.

[8] The patent states that luo han guo has many interfering flavors, which render it useless for general applications, and describes a process to remove them.

The offending compounds are sulfur-containing volatile substances such as hydrogen disulfide, methional, methionol, dimethylsulfide, and methylmercaptan, which are formed from amino acids that contain sulfur, such as methionine, S-methylmethionine, cystine, and cysteine.

The juice is homogenized, acidified slightly to prevent gelling and improve the flavor, then treated with pectinase or other enzymes to break down the pectin.

The process is claimed to preserve a substantial fraction of the mogrosides present in the fruit,[8] with the resulting sweetness at a level about 250 times stronger than sucrose.

[15][10] Experiments in mice and guinea pigs have shown anti-tussive effects,[10] matching its use in traditional Chinese medicine.

Culture mediums rich in mogrosides have been shown to markedly inhibit the proliferation of the bacterium Streptococcus mutans, a significant contributor to tooth decay.