The Herbarium
Part I · Medicinal herbs
Herb. No. 168
Stevia
Stevia rebaudiana
Asteraceae
The Paraguayan sweet herb — a few leaves that sugar a pot without sugar, and a bitter green aftertaste if you overdo it.
Culinary sweet leaf. Isolated steviol glycosides are a food additive. Whole-leaf status varies by country — this plate is the garden leaf.
- Parts used
- Leaf
- Traditional notes
- Kitchen sweetener · Traditional Guarani sweet tea
- Grow · USDA 6b
- Tender perennial, USDA 9–11; pot and overwinter north Cuttings root easily. Seed is fussy. In work: May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep
- Harvest
- Leaf before flower for the sweetest cut. Dry fast.
- A pinch of leaf is a cup. A handful is a dare.
- Flowering turns it more bitter.
Safety
Asteraceae allergy
Lore
The Guaraní called it ka’a he’ẽ — sweet herb — and used it in mate. A 19th-century Italian chemist, Rebaudi, got his name into the species. Japan adopted the extract when saccharin was in the dock. The garden leaf is still the older, greener, slightly bitterer truth.
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.