Botanical Name:Rhodiola Rosea L.

Rhodiola is a flowering perennial, growing in cold and arctic regions around the world. It can be found in a number of mountainous regions, including the Alps, Rockies, and Pyrenees. It grows on rocky ground between cracks and crevices, and is cold hardy. Rhodiola is dioecious, meaning that each plant is either male or female. It bears spikes of blue-green leaves and a single yellow flower that blooms during the brief arctic summer. In some villages in Siberia, a bouquet of rhodiola roots is still given to couples just prior to marriage to enhance fertility and to ensure the birth of healthy children.

North American Rhodiola: Our North American Rhodiola is coming from one of the few cultivated varieties in the world. It is grown and tended in soil free from chemicals and pesticides and is in accordance with the Good Agricultural and Collection Practice for Herbal Raw Materials (GACP). The GACP ensures herbal raw material will be correctly identified, nonadulterated, has accurate representation regarding the quality of the product, and is sustainably harvested.

Chinese Rhodiola: Rhodiola from China is the most prevalent material on the market. Our organic Chinese Rhodiola is wild harvested from organically certified lands. The sustainability of harvesting this plant from sensitive habitats is increasingly becoming a concern. Because of this China has stepped up its efforts to limit the harvest and sale of the plant in order to protect the plant and the ecosystem. We are still bringing in small amounts of this material when we can, but are focusing our purchasing power on moving towards the cultivated North American Rhodiola.