Leonurus cardiaca: 20 seeds of motherwort
Motherwort is a perennial from the same family as mint and sage, which shows in its square, hairy stems. The leaves give it away too: low on the plant they are deeply cut into about five coarsely toothed lobes, further up they drop to three, and near the top only oblong leaflets remain. From midsummer, dense whorls of small flowers appear in the leaf axils, pink to lilac, the upper lip covered in white hairs and the lower one curving down with reddish purple speckles. Most plants finish somewhere between sixty centimetres and a metre, though a specimen in a spot it likes will overshoot that comfortably.
The species probably originates in southeastern Europe and central Asia and has spread from there across much of Europe and North America, usually along roadsides, on waste ground and at woodland edges. Leonurus means lion's tail and refers to the shape of the flowering stem, while cardiaca points to the heart, an association the plant carried through centuries of old herbals and one that survives in common names across Europe. The whole plant has a herbal, fairly assertive scent that not everyone finds pleasant.
Sowing
- Give the seeds two to four weeks cold and moist, for instance in the fridge in a bag of damp sand.
- Sow in autumn or early spring, in pots or straight into the ground, and cover the seed only thinly.
- Keep the soil moist; at around twenty degrees germination usually takes two to three weeks.
- Space the plants roughly fifty centimetres apart, in sun or light shade on free-draining soil.
Motherwort is fully hardy and self-seeds without much encouragement. Cut spent stems back if you would rather it did not travel through the garden. These seeds are meant for cultivation and study, not for consumption; store them dry and out of reach of children.
More exotic seeds at Avalon
The same category holds Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Lactuca virosa (wild lettuce), Leonotis nepetifolia (klip dagga) and Hypericum perforatum (St John's wort). Every order leaves our warehouse discreetly packed.
