# Butcher’s broom (Ruscus aculeatus) *Kneeholly, kneeholm, kneehulver, Jew’s myrtle, sweet broom, pettigree; *Ruscus aculeatus* of Linnaeus; Culpeper’s Ruscus and Bruscus* **Known today as.** *Ruscus aculeatus*, a low, stiff evergreen of woods and waste places, especially in the south of England, which Grieve called the only shrub of the lily tribe in the country. What look like its leaves are flattened branches, “really a mere expansion of the stem,” each ending in a sharp spine; the small greenish-white flowers sit in the middle of them in early spring, male and female on separate plants, and the female plants carry scarlet berries “as large as cherries” through the winter. The rhizome is the part used now. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** Not for children and adolescents under eighteen, for want of data. The agency asks for a doctor before or during use if there is inflammation of the skin, hardening under it, ulcers, a sudden swelling of one or both legs, or heart or kidney failure, and for rectal bleeding. ## What was it used for? A diuretic and opener for the old physicians. Culpeper calls it “a plant of Mars, being of a gallant cleansing and opening quality”: the root boiled in wine to open obstructions, provoke urine, and expel gravel and the stone, and with honey to clear the chest of phlegm; the decoction drunk, with a poultice of berries and leaves, to knit broken bones. His usual way was to boil the root with parsley, fennel, and smallage in white wine, “yet I hope you have wit enough to give the strongest decoction to the strongest bodies.” Grieve still found it used for jaundice and gravel. ## What does modern science say? The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the rhizome as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for two purposes: to relieve discomfort and heaviness of the legs from minor disorders of the veins, and to relieve the itching and burning of haemorrhoids once a doctor has excluded anything serious (monograph of 2018). Its assessment report traces the plant’s chemistry to steroidal saponins first isolated from the rhizome in the middle of the twentieth century, built on ruscogenin and neoruscogenin, more concentrated below ground than above. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **ruscogenin**: the steroidal saponin aglycone, with neoruscogenin, more concentrated below ground - **neoruscogenin**: **Mechanism.** Not established in the sources read for this entry. **Standing.** European Union herbal monograph (2018): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for heavy legs from minor venous disorders and for the itching and burning of haemorrhoids. ## What lore surrounds it? Butchers swept their blocks with bundles of it, and so the English name; in Italy, Folkard says, it was tied into besoms for houses, and hucksters set boughs of it round bacon and cheese to keep the mice off. It was sold to the Jews for the Feast of Tabernacles, whence Jew’s myrtle, and Folkard reports that the Earls of Sutherland claimed it as the badge of their clan. Its boughs, Grieve and Folkard both say, were used for flogging chilblains. A related species with unarmed branches, *Ruscus racemosus*, Grieve took to be the original of the ‘poets’ laurel’ of classical prints. ## What did the older authorities say? **Dioscorides.** His *myrsine agria*, the wild myrtle, has a leaf like myrtle but broader and spear-pointed, a round fruit borne in the middle of the leaf and red when ripe, and willow-like branches many from one root. Leaves and berries in wine, he writes, induce urine, bring on the menses, and break stones in the bladder, and cure jaundice and headache; the young shoots are eaten like asparagus, though bitter. The chapter ends: “the Romans, ruscus.” **Nicholas Culpeper.** The first shoots from the root are “thick, whitish, and short, somewhat like those of Asparagus, but greater,” and the plant grows in copses and on heaths, often near the holly bushes; the decoction of the root “opens obstructions, provokes urine, helps to expel gravel and the stone, the stranguary and women’s courses, also the yellow jaundice and the head-ache.” **John Parkinson, as Grieve quotes him.** It kept ‘hanged meate’ from the mice, and made brooms, “but the King’s Chamber is by revolution of time turned to the Butcher’s stall, for that a bundle of the stalkes tied together serveth them to cleanse their stalls.” ## Sources - Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Broom, Butcher’s.” As published on botanical.com. - Culpeper, N. *The Complete Herbal*, “Butcher’s Broom.” Project Gutenberg, 49513. - Dioscorides. *De materia medica*, 4-146, in the modern English version of T. A. Osbaldeston and R. P. A. Wood (Johannesburg: Ibidis, 2000), after Goodyer’s translation of 1655. Internet Archive. - Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Butcher’s Broom.” Project Gutenberg, 44638. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Rusci rhizoma (Butcher's Broom)*. EMA/HMPC/188804/2017, 20 November 2018. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Rusci rhizoma*. EMA/HMPC/188805/2017, 20 November 2018. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Rusci rhizoma (Butcher's Broom)*. EMA/HMPC/188804/2017, 20 November 2018. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Rusci rhizoma*. EMA/HMPC/188805/2017, 20 November 2018. --- *Butcher’s broom.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-16. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/butcher-s-broom Historical description, not medical advice.