Low creeping mint-family plant with a dense, blunt violet flower head sitting on a ruff of paired leaves; lawns, verges and woodland clearings
Selfheal, Prunella vulgaris.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Selfheal
Native · flowers Jun–Oct · short turf, verges, woodland clearings and lawns
Prunella vulgaris — Lamiaceae
A low, creeping member of the mint family with dense, blunt heads of violet flowers set in a ruff of leaves. It grows in short turf, on verges and in lawns that have escaped herbicide, and was one of the great wound herbs of the herbalists, giving names such as all-heal and carpenter's herb. Even the scientific name recalls an old cure for a throat complaint.
How to spot them
- ▸Dense, oblong, blunt flower head of violet two-lipped flowers, up to about 4 cm long, with a pair of stalkless leaves like a collar just below it
- ▸Low, creeping stems with paired oval leaves, 20–30 cm tall at most
- ▸Calyx with red margins, hairy; purple-tinged seed head persists after flowering
- ▸Short turf, verges, woodland clearings and lawns; fine in unsprayed lawns
- ▸Bugle (Ajuga reptans) flowers in spring in whorls up a spike, with runners and a rosette of shiny leaves
How to know it
Gerard wrote that there was no better wound herb in the world than this one, bruised and worked into a salve with a knife point on a trencher
Selfheal (Grieve, quoting Gerard).
Its genus name comes from a German word for a throat inflammation, 'die Bräune' (quinsy), which it was said to cure
Prunella, from Brunella — selfheal (Grieve, quoting Cole, 'Adam in Eden').
Also called all-heal, hook-heal, carpenter's herb or blue curls, names that reflect its use for cuts from tools
Selfheal.
In North America it is known as 'heart of the earth', having spread there from Europe
Selfheal (Grieve).
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Lamiaceae, the mint family; Prunella derives from Brunella, from the German die Bräune, a throat inflammation (quinsy)
- •The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust gives a flowering season of June to October, height 20–30 cm, and notes bees and wasps take its nectar
- •Old names: all-heal, hook-heal, slough-heal, carpenter's herb, heart of the earth, blue curls
- •Gerard called it the best wound herb in the world; Culpepper explained the name 'Self-Heal' as the herb 'whereby when you are hurt, you may heal yourself'
- •Grieve notes it holds equal place with bugle in the esteem of herbalists, and was thought to heal wounds inside and out
- •Grieve notes that a pair of stalkless leaves stands just under the flower spike like a collar, and that no other plant is at all like it
- •It is common throughout Britain in pastures and waste ground, and even in lawns that have not been treated with chemicals
- •Its flower spike keeps a purple-tinged seed head after the flowers have gone
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust — Selfheal
- Mrs M. Grieve — A Modern Herbal: Self-Heal