Goutweed
Aegopodium podagraria
Monks cultivated goutweed in medieval monastic gardens as a reliable cure for gout and joint aches, which earned the plant its common name.
- Scientific name
- Aegopodium podagraria
- Taxonomy
- Plantae › Tracheophyta › Magnoliopsida › Apiales › Apiaceae › Aegopodium
- IUCN Red List status
- Least Concern
- Population trend
- increasing
- Biome
- forest
- Habitat
- Deciduous forests, woodland edges, gardens, and disturbed urban areas.
- Diet
- Autotrophic (Photosynthesis)
- Range
- Europe, Asia, North America, Oceania
- Size
- 30 to 100 cm tall, forming vast underground networks
- Lifespan
- Perennial (clones can persist for decades)
- Active
- diurnal
- Threats
- No major threats; it is highly resilient and considered an ecological threat to native forest understory plants.
- Safe to approach?
- Harmless to touch, but highly invasive. While young leaves are edible and taste like parsley, do not consume unless you are 100% certain of identification, as it closely resembles highly toxic species like Poison Hemlock. If removing it from your garden, ensure you dig up the entire root system, as even a tiny fragment of rhizome can regrow.
Aegopodium podagraria L. commonly called ground elder , herb gerard , bishop's weed , goutweed , gout wort , and snow-in-the-mountain , and sometimes called English masterwort , and wild masterwort , is a perennial plant in the carrot family (Apiaceae) that grows in shady places. The name "ground elder" comes from the superficial similarity of its leaves and flowers to those of elder ( Sambucus ), which is unrelated. It is the type species of the genus Aegopodium . This species is native to Eurasia, and...
Photo: Douglas Goldman, CC-BY-SA, via iNaturalist
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