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The Panax notoginseng is an important Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) and the quality is affected by growing environment. UV spectra approach was used to study the relationships between UV spectra of P. notoginseng and locations, rapidly. The UV spectra of fifty P. notoginseng samples which collected from ten regions were obtained and processed by using mean value, smoothing and derivative. The numbers of common peaks of chloroform, ethanol and water extractions were compared, respectively and the best extraction solvent was confirmed. The differences and relationships of P. notoginseng samples from different locations were investigated by comparing the characteristics of UV spectra combined with partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The results showed that the extract ratio was the best in chloroform and the RSD% of precision, repeatability and stability in 30 h were 0.00～0.42, 0.00～0.54 and 0.00～0.60, respectively. The spectra of samples collected from different areas were similar except the absorbance. It could display the fingerprint characteristics. The common peaks of UV spectra were 194, 200, 204, 210 and 218 nm and the peaks absorption value ranged from 0.00 to 4.00. It showed that the main constituent had low correlation with collection regions while the content may be affected by the collection areas. The PLS-DA score plots could show the relationships among the P. notoginseng from different locations. In conclusion, this qualitative method could evaluate P. notoginseng samples from different locations rapidly and exactly. Moreover, it could provide the reference for source discrimination of CHM.