The chromatographic fingerprint of Pinellia ternata was established by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using an Agilent C18 (5 μm, 4.6×250 mm) column; CH3OH∶H2O as elution solvents; an ultraviolet detector at 254 nm; a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The guanosine peak was used as the reference and the relative retention value α and the relative area Sr as the parameters for the survey of the chromatographic fingerprint. Nine copossessing peaks were selected as the charaterizing fingerprint peaks to distinguish Pinellia ternata from false Pinellia ternata. The relative retention time of the 9 peaks were 1.00, 1.12, 1.50, 1.56, 1.60, 1.67, 1.71, 1.81 and 1.87, respectively. These peaks can be used to identify the quality of Pinellia ternata.