# 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.

- **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.

## About

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...

## Sources

- Plate: https://gaia-dex.com/species/8e3676cc-7d09-4b4c-ad03-479ea8816d61
- iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/51741
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegopodium podagraria
- Conservation status: IUCN Red List category, as recorded by Gaia-Dex
- Photo: https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/175507973/medium.jpg (Douglas Goldman, CC-BY-SA, via iNaturalist)

Habitat, diet, size and similar notes are AI-written summaries; check them against the linked sources before relying on them.