Stachys sylvatica (Hedge Woundwort)

Hedge Woundwort is a British native perennial wild flower that provides nectar to our bees and butterflies. In the wild it grows in woodland and unmanaged grassland and prefers partial shade.

It produces whorls of beetroot-coloured blooms with white markings on a hairy, crimson-tinted stem.

Height and Spread: 80cm x 45cm

Common names: Hedge Woundwort; Whitespot; Hedge Nettle

John Gerard, wrote in his 1597 Herbal, "The leaves therof stamped with hogs grease, and stamped unto greene wounds in manner of a pultesse, heale them in shoort time, and in such absolute manner, that it is hard for any that have not had experience thereof to beleeve. Forbeing in Kent about a patient, it chanced that a poore man in mowing of Peason did cut his leg with a sithe, wherein hee made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of bloud; the poore man crept unto this herbe, which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantitie of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his daies worke againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day untill he was perfectly whole; which was accomplished in a few daies, by this herbe stamped with a little hogs grease, and so laid upon it in manner of a pultesse, which did as it were glew or sadder the lips of the wound together, and heale it according to the first intention, as wee terme it, that is, without drawing or bringing the wound to suppuration or matter; which was fully performed in seven daies, that would have required forty daies with balsam it selfe. I saw the wound and offered to heale the same for charity; which he refused, saying that I could not heale it so well as himselfe: a clownish answer I confesse, without any thankes for my goodwill: whereupon I have named it Clownes Wound-wort, as aforesaid."

Photo: carabus123, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons