Valerian

Overview

Valerian is tall, stately, and possessed of a root that smells, to most humans, like something between old socks and a small animal that has been somewhere unpleasant. Cats find it irresistible, which may or may not be relevant information depending on your view of cats' judgment. Despite the root's reputation, valerian has been a primary sleep and anxiety herb across European, Chinese, and Ayurvedic medicine for millennia — and unlike many traditional remedies, clinical evidence has accumulated in its favour. It grows by rivers and ditches in the company of meadowsweet and water mint, flowering in summer in pale pink clusters that smell, above the ground at least, perfectly pleasant. The reputation of the root is its own.

Botanical Notes

A tall, robust perennial reaching 1–1.5 metres with pinnate leaves of 7–12 pairs of lance-shaped, toothed leaflets. Dense, flat-topped clusters of small, pale pink to white flowers from June to August. Found in damp meadows, riverbanks, fens, and open woodland throughout Europe and Asia. Widely naturalized in North America. The root contains valerenic acid and isovaleric acid — compounds with documented sedative and anxiolytic effects on GABA receptors — as well as iridoid valepotriates.

Lore & History

The Roman physician Dioscorides called it phu — an exclamation of distaste for the smell that has proved accurate across two thousand years. In medieval European medicine it was among the most valued sleep herbs, appearing in herbals from Hildegard of Bingen to Nicholas Culpeper, who assigned it to Mercury and recommended it for nervous complaints, trembling, and palpitations. During the Second World War, valerian preparations were distributed to civilians in England to relieve stress from the Blitz. In some European folk traditions the root was used in love magic, carried by women to attract suitors — which either says something flattering about medieval tolerance for unusual smells, or something complicated about the nature of attraction.

Warnings