The polysaccharide of Thamnolia vermicularis grown in Lijiang City,Yunnan province was isolated by water extracting-alcohol precipitating method.Taking the polysaccharide extraction rate as the indicator,the optimal extracting conditions were studied by the way of orthogonal test.Moreover,the anti-oxidation activities of the polysaccharide were also observed in vitro.The results showed that the optimal extraction conditions of the polysaccharide were 80 ℃ for extracting temperature,12 h for time and 1 ∶ 15 for ratio of water(mL)to material(g).Under these processing conditions,the polysaccharide extraction rate was 2.609 %(RSD =1.48 %).In addition,the polysaccharide had certain effect on scavenging free radicals of.OH and O2-.in vitro and exhibited the dose-effect relation.