Motherwort

Motherwort Plants For Sale

Leonurus Cardiaca

Herb Growing Tips

Light: Full Sun even Full Shade

Temperature:  Zones: 3-8

Watering: Consistent watering while getting establish but after this herb is consider drought tolerant.

Soil: Best grown in moist, fertile soils in part shade. Avoid dry soils. 

Comments:  This plant can be invasive but can be contained with the growers monitoring the growth. Once it has flowered cutting it back to roughly 5-6" in height will avoid the plants seed from maturing and self seeding. Also growing in a container can also contain this plant!

Herb Description:

An herbaceous perennial of the mint family that typically grows to 2-4’ tall. Upright, four-angled stems are clad with pairs of opposite, wedge-shaped, horizontally-held, long-stalked, dull green leaves. Each leaf has three distinctive lobes with pointed tips. Lower leaves are 2-4” long, but diminish in both length and lobe size in the upper parts of the plant. Small, sessile, pink-lilac flowers (each to 1/2” long) with tubular 2-lipped corollas bloom from June to August in rosettes nestled in the leaf axils.

Brought to North America as a medicinal herb, used particularly for ailments of the heart and nervous system. Motherwort has a long history of serving as an herbal with medicinal properties. It was once used by herb doctors in the treatment of a variety of female medical disorders, hence the common name reference to mother. 

Besides the traditional medical use, motherwort is used in some cuisines as condiment in various vegetable soup recipes, particularly the lentil or split peas ones, or for flavoring of beer and tea, thus increasing the potential intake of the medicinal plant by the general public.