Marrubium vulgare

Marrubium vulgare is a tender drought hardy perennial and a member of the mint family, used historically for making candies, syrups and teas.

👨‍🌾GARDENING TIPS👨‍🌾: Marrubium vulgare

• • Cutting back after the first flowering produces a second bloom
  • Looks great with Echinacea purpurea, Stipa tenuissima and Lavandula angustifolia

Learn more about gardening with White Horehound:

• • ENG: Gardening with Horehound
  • ENG: Antifungal properties of Marrubium vulgare
  • ENG: A Phytochemical and Pharmacological review

👩‍🍳COOKING TIPS👩‍🍳: Marrubium vulgare

• • Horehound candy drops are bittersweet hard cough drops : the taste is similar to menthol and root beer.
  • Horehound beer : similar to root beer
  • Horehound herbal tea : similar to the Maghrebi mint tea

The Tale & The Botany: Marrubium vulgare

The Oxford English Dictionary derives the word horehound from Old English hoar (furry, as in “hoarfrost”) and hune (a word of unknown origin designating a class of herbs or plants).

The word “white” is generally used in botanical contexts, to distinguish it from black horehound (Ballota nigra), a similar-looking herb.

The Latin name Marrubium derives from the Hebrew word marrob, meaning bitter juice, while vulgare means ‘common’ or ‘well known’.

White horehound has been mentioned in conjunction with use as a folk medicine dating at least back to the 1st century BC, where it appeared as a remedy for respiratory ailments in the treatise De Medicina by Roman encyclopaedist Aulus Cornelius Celsus.

It is one of the ingredients of the Ricola throat lozenge.

Gnerally, it is used today more as a food or flavoring additive rather than a specific cure.

Floral Morphology: Marrubium vulgare

Marrubium vulgare is a herbaceous perennial of the Lamiaceae (mint) family.

Its flowers are small, tubular, and bilabiate (two-lipped), typically whitish to pale pink, arranged in dense, globular axillary clusters along the upper stems.

Each flower has a calyx of five fused sepals and a corolla with a pronounced upper and lower lip, adapted for insect pollination.

The flowers are hermaphroditic, with four stamens (two long, two short) and a single style that protrudes slightly.

Flowering occurs mainly from late spring to early summer, and the inflorescences are subtended by small, woolly bracts.

Reproductive Biology

Marrubium vulgare reproduces both sexually and vegetatively.

Sexual reproduction occurs via seed (achenes), which are small, hard, and capable of dispersal by wind or animals.

The seeds germinate readily under suitable conditions.

Vegetative reproduction is possible through root and stem fragments, allowing the plant to form clonal patches.

Marrubium vulgare is primarily pollinated by bees and other nectar-collecting insects, and its flowers produce nectar to attract pollinators.

The species is self-fertile but benefits from cross-pollination to increase seed viability.