[7] The generic name Stellera (not to be confused with the entirely unrelated Stellaria) commemorates Georg Wilhelm Steller (Stöller), while the specific epithet chamaejasme is a rendering into botanical Latin orthography of the Greek χαμαί khamai "(down) on the ground" and ιασμε iasme "jasmine".

[5][10] In China, it is found on sunny dry slopes and sandy places between 2600 and 4200 m.[10] Stellera chamaejasme is cultivated as an ornamental plant in rock gardens and alpine houses.

[5] The Russians living in Dauria still hold Stellera in high esteem on account of its root, despite the fact that its violent effects have already dispatched a good many people to the afterlife.

The young Tungus boys are in the habit of adorning their bare heads with a kind of hat which they create most artistically by interweaving whole flowering stems of the plant.

[Translated from the French of a text closely based on the account of Prussian naturalist and explorer Peter Simon Pallas ].

The powdered roots have been used as a laxative,[12] as a pesticide and as a fish poison, and have also been used in small doses as a drastic anthelmintic for sheep and goats.

It is used as a medicinal herb in China, but can be considered an undesirable element in the flora if it should proliferate to too great an extent, as its large, water-thirsty roots speed up the desertification of prairies.

[15] Corroboration of this evidence for the damaging effect upon animal intestines of the consumption of certain plants belonging to the Thymelaceae may be found in an account of "Lasiosiphon kraussianus Hutch.

of South Africa: the plant is exceedingly poisonous and rapidly fatal to stock: the intestines of an animal perforate about a day after eating it.

86, langdu) - and as possessing the same or very similar medicinal properties: pungent, poisonous plants used as cathartics, anthelmintics, expectorants, also used topically to treat ulcers and skin diseases.

A recent work on the medicinal plants of Mongolia [4] notes the presence in the root (rhizome) of sugars, organic acids, saponins and tannins and the following specific compounds: the flavonoids 5,7-dihydroxy-4',11-dimethoxy-3',14-dimethylbenzoflavanone, ruixianglangdusu A and B, 4',4'",5,5",7,7"-hexahydroxy-3,3"-biflavone, 7-methoxyneochamaejasmin A; the coumarins: sfondine, isobergapten, pimpinellin, isopimpinellin, umbelliferone, daphniretin, bicoumastechamin and daphnetin; diterpenes (unspecified); the lignans: (+)-kusunokinin, lirioresinol-B, magnolenin C, (-)-pinoresinol monomethyl ether, (-)-pinoresinol, (+)-matairesinol, isohinokinin, and (-)-eudesmin; and the steroids: daucosterol, β-sitosterol.

[4] A scientific paper of 2015 refers to this plant - regarded as a choice and hard-to-grow ornamental by European and American gardeners - as being one of the most toxic of grassland weeds in the range where it is native and notes that cattle which consume its shoots and flowers may be fatally poisoned.

The phytotoxic compounds were observed to be liberated particularly by dead or moribund specimens of S. chamaejasme and to lead to reduced seedling growth in the grasses Lolium perenne L., Psathyrostachys juncea (Fisch.)

Furthermore, pesticidal properties were confirmed to be present in S. chameajasme: the ethanolic extract of S. chameajasme strongly inhibited the growth of the following insect pests: the butterfly Pieris rapae, the aphid Myzus persicae and the corn-borer moth Ostrinia furnacalis, and showed contact and oral toxicities against two other stem-borer moths which are pests of rice: Sesamia inferens and Chilo suppressalis.