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Conium Maculatum

Reduces vertigo and nausea after chemotherapy

  • Family. Apiaceae (Parsley Family).

  • Synonyms. Latin: Coriandrum cicuta Crantz, Cicuta vulgaris, Conium major, Corianfrum cicuta. Spanish: Cicuta mayor. French: Grande ciguë. German: Gefleckter Schierling.

  • Description. A biennial, deciduous herb, with a top-shaped, simple, whitish root. The stem is erect, branching, round, hollow, except at the joints, smooth, spotted reddish-brown, glaucous, and from 1.2 to 2.4 m high. The leaves are large, alternate, with long furrowed petioles, sheathing at their base, tri-pinnate, with lanceolate, pinnatifid leaflets. They are dark, dull green above and pale beneath, with a fetid odor when bruised. The inflorescences are in the form of flat, terminal, long-stalked umbels, usually in pairs but occasionally in whorls of 3, with 10-20 rays that are often covered on the inside with short, downy hairs. Flowering occurs during June and July. The involucre usually comprises five or six short bracts less than half the length of the rays; they are narrowly triangular-lanceolate, acuminate, and reflexed with a membranous, whitish margin. The two to six bracts of the involucel, which are formed only on the outside of the umbellules, are ovate-lanceolate, somewhat broadened and often connected at the base, thin-skinned at the margin, glabrous, shorter or longer than the umbellular rays, and reflexed. The flowers are hermaphroditic with 5 very small green sepals, 5 obcordate, slightly emarginate white petals about 1.5 mm long and over 1 mm wide, with curved tips, and 5 stamens bent from the bottom to the middle, and spread thereafter. The inferior concrescent ovary has 2 locules which contain a single, hanging anatropous ovule per enclosure. The ovary is crowned by two divergent, filamentous styles 0.5-1 mm long, with capitate stigmas, and thickened at their base into a stylopodium.

  • Habitat. It grows in waste places in temperate countries of Asia, Europe and northern Africa. It has been naturalized in much of the U.S. Found in waste places near the water.

  • Used parts. Whole plant flowering and fresh at the beginning of flowering.