Black haw
Sloe, stag bush, sloe-leaved viburnum; Viburnum prunifolium L.
- Known today as
- Viburnum prunifolium, a North American shrub or small tree ten to twenty feet high, of the honeysuckle family, growing in dry woods, thickets, and rocky hillsides from Connecticut to Illinois and most abundantly in the south. Its spreading, rather stunted branches give it, King’s Dispensatory says, “an unthrifty appearance”; it bears white flowers in large flat clusters from March to June, and sweet, edible, blackish berries. The bark of the root, stem, and branches is the drug, the root bark preferred by the Eclectics; it is bitter and slightly aromatic.
- Kind
- Plant, in 1 older authority
- Constituents
- bitter resin, tannic acid
- Earliest authority here
- Felter and Lloyd, King’s American Dispensatory (1898)
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online · GBIF · Wikidata
Caution. King’s notes that large doses sometimes cause nausea and vomiting, and that some observers said it made the muscle of the womb contract, though it was used to prevent miscarriage. None of the modern sources read for this entry reports on its safety, in pregnancy or otherwise.
Black haw: what was it used for?
A remedy for the womb. King’s, in 1898, calls it “the most valuable of the genus Viburnum,” brought forward by Dr. D. L. Phares of Mississippi as nervine, antispasmodic, tonic, astringent, and diuretic, and used chiefly for painful, cramping menstruation, uterine bleeding at the menopause, cramps of the legs, and above all threatened and habitual miscarriage, for which it calls it “the most prompt drug in the materia medica,” provided the membranes had not ruptured.
Black haw: what does modern science say?
No European monograph covers it, and the searches of Europe PMC made for this entry found no clinical trial of black haw. King’s itself admitted in 1898 that “of the physiological action of this agent little is known.”
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- bitter resina brown one and a greenish-yellow one, in Van Allen’s analysis of the bark
- tannic acid ChEMBLwith oxalic, citric, and malic acids
- Mechanism
- Little known; King’s wrote in 1898 that “of the physiological action of this agent little is known.”
- Standing
- There is no European monograph. It was official in the United States Pharmacopoeia in 1898; no clinical trial of it was found for this entry.
- Felter, H. W., & Lloyd, J. U. (1898). King’s American Dispensatory, vol. 2, “Viburnum prunifolium.” Internet Archive, kingsamericandis02kinguoft. Read in part · the text read
Constituent names open the compound’s record at PubChem, and “ChEMBL” beside a name opens its record at ChEMBL, the European Bioinformatics Institute’s database of bioactive molecules. Where a mechanism line was checked against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37, read 1 October 2026), the check is shown with the measured value and its source paper, or says plainly that nothing has been measured. Doses are as the references give them, for description only; this is not medical advice. Each source carries the result of its check against Crossref, PubMed, or the authority’s page: see Verification.
Black haw: what lore surrounds it?
Its bark was much substituted. Smith, in 1932, notes that nannyberry was often sold as black haw, and judged of the class that “the virtues assigned to this class of medicine are as feeble as they are numerous”; he also found mountain maple bark sold for cramp bark, “about as effective as a uterine sedative and preventative of abortion.” Grieve wrote that cramp bark, from the guelder rose, has the same constituents as black haw but is considered much weaker.
Black haw: what did the older authorities say?
- Felter and Lloyd, King’s American Dispensatory (1898)
- King’s records, from Scudder, that “it was for a long time customary for planters to compel their female slaves ‘to drink an infusion of black haw daily whilst pregnant to prevent abortion, from taking the cotton-root’”; Phares held that it would neutralise cotton-root bark taken to cause miscarriage. The passage implies that enslaved women were taking cotton root to end their pregnancies, and that slaveholders forced black haw on them to prevent it.
Sources
- Felter, H. W., & Lloyd, J. U. (1898). King’s American Dispensatory, vol. 2, “Viburnum prunifolium.” Internet Archive, kingsamericandis02kinguoft. Read in part · the text read
- Smith, H. H. (1932). Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians, Nannyberry. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4. Project Gutenberg, 49527. Read in part · the text read
- Grieve, M. A Modern Herbal, “Guelder Rose.” As published on botanical.com. Read in full · the text read
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the pass over the remaining 343 entries
- The Standing line checked against the authority it names (EMA, WHO, FDA, CITES, Commission E)
- Every dated or regulatory claim checked by category across the database
- Sources
- 3 cited: 1 read in full, 2 read in part.
- Corrections
- None were needed.
What was checked, how, and what was found is set out on the Verification page. A checked source is one whose record was found; it does not make the entry medical advice.
Club members can point at a technical term in this entry, such as a constituent, an action, or a word of Jung’s, to read its definition from the source. The Club.
Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published October 17, 2026
- Chicago
“Black haw.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 17, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-haw.
- MLA
“Black haw.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 17 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-haw. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Black haw. (2026, October 17). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/black-haw
Club members keep entries on a shelf with private notes, print the plates as cards, and receive an entry by email each week. Create a free account before January 1, 2027 and all of it is yours for good. About the Club
See Also
Sharing tannic acid
Drawing on the same sources: Felter, Smith, Grieve
Black cohosh · Borax · Black walnut · Wild ginger · Bloodroot · Black seed · Blackcurrant · the bibliography →
Nearby in the alphabet
Black hellebore (Helleborus niger) · Black pepper (The dried fruit of Piper nigrum) · Bitter aloes (The dried leaf juice of Aloe barbadensis and A) · Bistort (snakeweed) · Birch polypore (A white bracket of dead birch)
Historical description, not medical advice.
