HOREHOUND
Marrubium vulgare
COMMON NAMES: Horehound, white horehound.
FEATURES: The most Common of the species of plants in the mint family (Labiatae). Horehound is native
to Europe but has escaped to waste places in temperate zones of North America, especially from Maine
southward to Texas and westward to California and Oregon. It grows on dry, sandy fields, waste grounds,
and roadsides. The most common horehound is Marrubium vulgare, originating from the Hebrew marrob,
meaning a bitter juice.
The entire plant is clothed in white, downy hairs, giving it a hoary appearance. Its stems are stout, four-
angled, and mainly erect, with opposite, ovate, rugose, crenately toothed and softly white hairy leaves.
The white flowers are small, strongly two-lipped, and densely crowded in the uppermost axils of the
stems. The whole herb is medicinal. The flowers appear in June to September and should be gathered
before opening. The plant yields a bitter juice of distinct odor and aromatically agreeable taste. The
extract is used by the candy houses for an old-time prescription as a cough candy. Can be used fresh or
dry.
MEDICINAL PART: The whole herb.
SOLVENTS: Boiling water, diluted alcohol.
BODILY INFLUENCE: Stimulant, tonic, bitter stomachic, expectorant, resolvent, anthelmintic (large doses),
diuretic, diaphoretic, laxative.
USES: Perhaps the most popular of herbal pectoral remedies for congestion of coughs, colds, and
pulmonary affections associated with unwanted phlegm from the chest. The warm infusion will produce
perspiration and flow of urine, and is used with great benefit in jaundice, asthma, hoarseness,
amenorrhea, and hysteria.
Taken in large doses it is laxative and will expel worms. The cold infusion is an excellent tonic for
some forms of dyspepsia. Some herbalists have found it of use for mercurial salivation. Culpeper used
horehound in various other ways: “To repel the afterbirth, as an antidote to poisons and for the bites of
venomous serpents.” Others used it for running sores. The hot infusion of tincture is more effective when