''Peucedanum officinale'' is a herbaceous
perennial plant in the family
Apiaceae found mainly in Central Europe and Southern Europe.
It is also native to the UK, where it has the common names hog's fennel
and sulphurweed,
but it is a rare plant there, occurring only in certain localities in the counties of
Essex and
Kent. It was formerly also found near the town of
Shoreham-by-Sea in the county of
West Sussex, but has long been
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
there.
Habitat: rough grassland, clayey banks and cliffs near the sea. It is a
glabrous perennial with stems up to 2 m in height, solid,
striate, sometimes weakly angled, sparsely blotched wine red, surrounded by fibrous remains of
petioles at the base and springing from a stout
rootstock. The
umbels of greenish-yellow flowers contrast pleasingly with the bushy, radiating mass of dark green, long-petioled leaves, which bear
linear,
sessile lobes,
attenuate at both ends and having narrow, cartilaginous margins (i.e., individual lobes resembling blades of grass).
''Peucedanum officinale'' has been known as a medicinal plant in Britain since at least the 17th century and features in the
herbals of
Nicholas Culpeper (in whose day it was more plentiful, for he records it as growing abundantly on
Faversham marshes) and
John Gerard. Culpepper records the additional common names hoar strange, hoar strong, (compare German "Haarstrang", meaning ''hog's tail'') brimstonewort and sulphurwort.
The long stout taproot - 'black without and white within' and sometimes 'as big as a man's thigh', as Gerard has it - yields, when incised in Spring, a considerable quantity of a yellowish-green
latex, which dries into a gummy
oleoresin and retains the strong, sulphurous scent of the root. This harvesting technique, and the product so obtained, very much recall those of two other medicinal
umbellifers
Apiaceae or Umbelliferae is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus ''Apium'' and commonly known as the celery, carrot or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering plants ...
: ''
Ferula assa-foetida'' and ''
Dorema ammoniacum
''Ferula ammoniacum'' (syn. ''Dorema ammoniacum'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae, native to Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. It is the source of Persian gum ammoniac.
References
ammoniacum
Ammoniacum ...
''. A decoction of the root of ''P. officinale'' is
diuretic,
sudorific,
antiscorbutic and controls
menstruation
Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and mucosal tissue from the inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of hor ...
. ''Gummi Peucedani'', the oleoresin derived from the drying of the root latex, has properties similar to those of ''Gum Ammoniac'' (the oleoresin derived from ''Dorema ammoniacum''). ''Peucedanum officinale'' has also been used in
veterinary medicine.
[''A Dictionary of Plants Used by Man'' Usher, George. Pub. Constable, London 1974.]
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q459253
officinale
Plants described in 1753
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus