Abstract: To study the identification characters of Ilex cornuta and its confused herb Mahonia bodinieri and to establish an identification method.LMVP (leaf morphological-venation pattern for identification Chinese herbs),and QAERM (quantitatively analyze and evaluating reliability for the methodof identification Chinese herbs) were applied for the study.There exsist distinct differences between leaf morphological and venation of the two kinds.The mainfeatures ofthe leaf of Ilex cornuta:it is of short petiole with different shapes likesubrectangle,oblong-rectangle,elliptical,ovate,occasionally suborbicular.The venation shapes,such as craspedodromous-brochidodromous-semicraspedodromous pinnate,brochidodromous pinnate,and brochidodromous-semicraspedodromous pinnate,differ from the basal secondary veins numbering ≤2.The areoles are formed by veinsfrom primary vein to tertiary vein,their shapes and size were various,big-sized with a diameter about 2~9 mm.The main features of the leaflets of Mahonia bodinieri:it is of no petiolule,and the shapes are long-ovate,ovate-lanceolate,ovate or suborbicular.The venation differ from brochidodromous-semicraspedodromous pinnate to semicraspedodrom-ous pinnate with the basal secondary vein numbering ≥3.The areoles are formed by veins from primary vein to quaternary vein with different shapes like quadrilateral,pentagon,hexagon or triangle.They are regular in size and shapes,but small in size with a diameter about 0.4~0.8 mm.Withkey differences of the 5 mentioned groups,both plants and their velvetherbal pieces could be successfully identified from each other.The accuracy of identification results (Ac) was from 98.2% to 100%,the repeatability of identification results:agreement rate for observation (ARO) was from 98.2% to 99.6% and Kappa value was from 0.96 to 0.99.The established method is simple,rapid,economic and reliable.

Key words: Ilex cornuta, Mahonia bodinieri, leaf morphological, venation pattern, identification Chinese herbs