# Chickweed (Stellaria media)

*Starweed, star chickweed, *Passerina*; French *stellaire*; German *Augentrosgräs*; *Stellaria media* Cyrill., *Alsine media* Linn.*

**Known today as.** *Stellaria media*, of the family Caryophyllaceae, the ubiquitous garden weed: native, Grieve writes, to all temperate and north Arctic regions and naturalised wherever settlers went. Its weak, juicy stems trail on the ground and carry a single line of hairs that switches sides at each pair of leaves; the small white flowers have deeply cleft petals, like stars. The whole herb, fresh or dried, is the drug, and the young leaves can be boiled like spinach or eaten raw in salad.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** None of the sources read for this entry reports poisoning or side effects; its safety as a medicine has not been studied in the sources read.

## What was it used for?

A cooling application for the skin. Grieve calls it demulcent and refrigerant, “held in great repute among herbalists, used mostly in the form of an ointment”: boiled in lard it made a green cooling ointment for piles, sores, and skin diseases, and the fresh leaves made poultices for inflammations, indolent ulcers, carbuncles, and abscesses. An infusion of the dried herb was given for coughs and hoarseness.

## What does modern science say?

No European monograph covers it. The searches of Europe PMC made for this entry found laboratory and formulation studies of its extracts but no clinical trial in people.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

**Mechanism.** Not established in the sources read for this entry.

**Standing.** There is no European monograph, and no clinical trial of it was found for this entry.

## What lore surrounds it?

Gerard, as Grieve quotes him, wrote that “little birds in cadges (especially Linnets) are refreshed with the lesser Chickweed when they loath their meat,” whence its old name *Passerina*; caged birds and chickens still get it. Its flowers are said to open about nine in the morning and stay open twelve hours in bright weather, and at night its leaves fold over the young shoots, an instance of what Grieve calls “the Sleep of Plants.” Thiselton-Dyer records it as a weather sign: it spreads its leaves fully before fine weather, but “if it should shut up, then the traveller is to put on his greatcoat.” Grieve notes too that “Chickweed water is an old wives’ remedy for obesity.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Culpeper, *The Complete Herbal* (1653).** “A fine soft pleasing herb under the dominion of the Moon,” Culpeper writes, as effectual as purslane for all its purposes “except for meat only.” The bruised herb or its juice, laid on the region of the liver and renewed as it dried, cooled the heat of the liver, and it served for swellings, redness of the face, itch, hot eyes, and earache. Grieve quotes his cure for shrunken sinews: chickweed and red-rose leaves boiled in muscadine with oil of sheep’s feet, rubbed in warm, which “with God’s blessing” would help in three dressings.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Chickweed.” As published on botanical.com.
- Culpeper, N. *The Complete Herbal*, “CHICKWEED.” Project Gutenberg, 49513.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*, ch. 10, “Plants and the Weather”. Project Gutenberg, 10118.
- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Chickweed.” As published on botanical.com.

---

*Chickweed.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-17. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/chickweed

Historical description, not medical advice.