In order to study the feasibility of the identification of Chinese herbal medicines based on terahertz spectroscopy, the optical characteristic of astragalus, angelica, eucommia and three kinds of astragalus samples with different impurities in the frequency range 0.2-2.2 THz were researched by terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), and their time-domain spectra, the frequency spectra and the absorption spectra were obtained at room temperature. The results indicated that the time-domain spectra, frequency-domain spectra and absorption spectra of astragalus, angelica, and eucommia have large differences in such a frequency range, the frequency-domain spectra and absorption spectra of three kinds of astragalus samples with different impurities are similar but there exists distinct difference. These researches proved that it is feasible to use terahertz time-domain spectroscopy to identify Chinese herbal medicine and provided a new method for Chinese herbal medicine quality control.