Somewhere between the M4 and the A303, if you take the right minor road at the right time of year, you will find yourself driving

There is a plant growing on damp roadsides, river margins, and neglected patches of waste ground across Britain right now that nobody talks about. It

In the mythology surrounding this plant, Helen of Troy wept, and where her tears fell elecampane sprang from the earth. The Romans named the species

Open almost any British kitchen cupboard and you will find it. A small jar, probably purchased years ago, the label faded, the contents somewhere between

In the sixteenth century, John Gerard recorded an observation about goldenrod that has not aged well. The herb, he noted, was being imported into London

In 1763, a country clergyman from Oxfordshire named Edward Stone wrote a letter to the President of the Royal Society. He had been experimenting, he

In 1893, if you walked into a high street chemist with a sluggish liver, dull skin, or “habitual melancholia,” you wouldn’t be handed a prescription.

In late September, driving almost anywhere in rural England, you will see them. Little red-orange globes, strung along the hedgerows like something a child might

Somewhere in a monastic physic garden, one of those austere, purposeful plots that the Benedictines tended across medieval Britain, there was almost certainly a stand

There is a moment, standing in a kitchen with seven jars of dried herbs lined up like a small congregation, when a tea blend stops

Walk into any health food shop in Britain today and you will find it. Usually on a shelf at eye level. Sometimes in a sleek

There is a plant growing on hedgebanks and field margins throughout Britain right now that the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton called an “all-heal.” It rises