The Herbarium
Part I · Medicinal herbs
Herb. No. 147
Lovage
Levisticum officinale
Apiaceae
A perennial celery that forgot to be polite — Maggi-herb of European yards, a stock leaf with a long digestive record.
Culinary leaf, seed, and stem. Identify your garden plant; wild umbels include deadly lookalikes.
- Parts used
- Leaf · Stem · Seed · Root in old kitchens
- Traditional notes
- Kitchen stock · After a heavy stew · Traditional digestive
- Grow · USDA 6b
- Perennial, USDA 4–8 Seed or a division. Give it a meter. In work: Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep
- Harvest
- Leaf through the season; seed when umbels tan.
- One plant. You will not need two.
- Cut hard or it becomes a tree of celery.
Safety
Kidney disease in medicinal — not food — amounts Unidentified wild Apiaceae Pregnancy in medicinal amounts
Lore
The name is a mash of ligusticum and ‘love-ache’ — a medieval aphrodisiac joke that outlived the evidence. Charlemagne listed it in the Capitulare de villis. Central European kitchens still call it Maggi-kraut because a leaf tastes like the cube. A monastery garden without lovage was, for a while, not trying.
The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.