# Eryngo (Eryngium maritimum)

*Sea holly; *Eryngium**

**Known today as.** *Eryngium maritimum*, a spiny blue-grey thistle-like plant of sand dunes, with long sweet roots.

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Saponin irritation (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/saponin)

## What was it used for?

The candied root, a restorative and, by reputation, an aphrodisiac; also for the stone and for obstructions.

## What does modern science say?

No evidence for its reputation.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **saponins**: triterpenoid, in the root
- **rosmarinic acid**: 
- **polyacetylenes**: falcarinol
- **coumarins**: 

**Mechanism.** The root is a mild diuretic and the saponins are expectorant; the aphrodisiac reputation of the candied root, Falstaff’s “eringoes,” has no pharmacology behind it.

**Dose.** Safe; the saponins vomit in excess.

**Standing.** No monograph; the candied root was a Colchester sweetmeat into the nineteenth century.

## What lore surrounds it?

Falstaff, embracing Mistress Ford in *The Merry Wives of Windsor*, calls on the sky to “hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes.” Colchester was famous for its candied eryngo roots.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** “The white variety of the eryngium is known in our language as the ‘centum capita,’” and the Greeks eat “both the stalk and the root as an article of food, either boiled or raw.” Then the marvel: “the root of it, it is said, bears a strong resemblance to the organs of either sex; it is but rarely found, but if a root resembling the male organs should happen to fall in the way of a man, it will ensure him woman's love; hence it is that Phaon the Lesbian was so passionately beloved by Sappho.” Pliny files this among the “reveries” of the Magi and of “Pythagorean philosophers even,” before listing the plant's uses in hydromel for flatulency, gripings and diseases of the heart, stomach and liver; gathered at the summer solstice for maladies of the neck; and “attached as an amulet to the person” as a cure for albugo.

**Culpeper.** “The plant is venereal, and breeds seed exceedingly, and strengthens the spirit procreative”: the root decocted in wine opens the spleen and liver, provokes urine and expels the stone, taken fifteen days for the strangury; bruised and boiled in hog’s grease it draws forth thorns and broken bones; the distilled water “helps the melancholy of the heart.”

## Sources

- Shakespeare, W., *The Merry Wives of Windsor* V.v.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Holly, Sea.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 22.9, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Eringo, Or Sea-Holly.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Wang, P., et al. (2012). “Phytochemical constituents and pharmacological activities of *Eryngium* L.” *Pharmaceutical Crops* 3.

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*Eryngo.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/eryngo

Historical description, not medical advice.