China is a country with varieties herbal medicines

majority of them have many originals.These medicinal plant always come from a part of the same group belong to the same family

and the other plants of the group is not generally of the 2010 edition of Chinese Pharmacopoeia

which easily cause confusion on clinical application of Chinese medicine.As a traditional Chinese medicine

Gentianae Macrophyllae Radix is known as its significant effect in therapy of rheumatic or rheumatoid arthrits with muscular contracture and severe joint pain.Gentianae Macrophyllae Radix is a multisource Chinese drug comes from the root of four species.Gentianae Macrophyllae Radix has a larger range of morphological variation

its interspecific characteristics is not obvious

so it's easily lead to market confusion of medicine varieties.This paper focuses on identification methods of Gentianae Macrophyllae Radix and a comprehensive overview of various identification methods researches progress in this herb were displayed.Four traditional identification methods of pharmacognosy and various modern identification methods are compared

their advantages and disadvantages are discussed.It showed that traditional and modern methods should be combined when objective assessment of Chinese herbal medicines.