Mother's Herb Garden White Horehound

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During the seder feast of the Jewish Passover celebration, a bitter herb is eaten to remind those present of the bitterness of captivity in Egypt. White horehound (Marrubium uulgare) is thought to be one of the five plants originally prescribed for this purpose. Indeed, many etymologists believe that the Latin name for horehound, marrubium, may be derived from the Hebrew word maror, which means "bitter juice."

The physicians of ancient Greece, and those of Europe during the Middle Ages, used the herb to treat a variety of ailments. It was touted as an antidote to vegetable poisons, snakebite, and the bite of a mad dog. Many of these old prescriptions have since been discredited, but ancient and modern herbalists are in perfect agreement on one point: Horehound is very effective for clearing congested lungs.

These pulmonary cleansing qualities seem to be brought into play regardless of the form in which the herb is administered. The Greek physician Dioscorides recommended a tea made from the dried seed or the green leavessweetened, of course, with honey. The herb is most familiar to us today in the guise of the bittersweet candy still sold in some stores, its distinctive flavor barely masked by syrup and brown sugar.

A denizen of dry, rocky ground, horehound is now probably as common in the U.S. as it is over its native range of Europe and Asia. This gray-green perennial occasionally achieves a stature of two feet, though not without developing a rumpled appearance. Its squarish, stooping stems are seldom branched, and its drooping leaves, ovate and arranged opposite each other, are hoary and wrinkled. Like many other members of the mint family, horehound blooms along the upper stalk at the leaf junctures, its small, white, snapdragon-like flowers forming dense coronal clusters.