Background : Although Oplopana elatus is a valuable medicinal plant that, like ginseng, recommends itself as source of herbal preparations, little molecular information on this plant is available. Therefore, to analyze the terpenoid biosynthetic pathway in O. elatus, we employed an RNA-seq approach. Methods and Results : To generate a transcriptome library of O. elatus, total RNA was extracted from different tissues, including leaves, stem, and root. A pooled RNA sample was prepared by combining equivalent RNA from different tissues. Using pair-end read with the Illumina platform, a total of 78,646,554 raw sequencing reads were generated. After data cleaning, approximately 77 million high-quality reads were obtained with 98% G20 (base quality of greater than 20). The high-quality reads were assembled into 208,959 unigenes with an average length of 1,073 bp and an N50 of 1,768 bp. Consistent with our prediction, which was based on the KEGG pathway assignment, we found 122 unigenes encoding 47 putative enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of terpenoid and triterpenoid saponins in the O. elatus transcriptome library. Conclusion : The transcriptome dataset generated in this study will serve as a valuable resource for accelerating genomic and functional genomic research in O. elatus and in the family Araliaceae.