# Ground pine (Ajuga chamaepitys)

**Camepitio**

**Known today as.** *Ajuga chamaepitys*, yellow bugle, distinct from arthritica (note XLIX).

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Among the amulet herbs: hung about the neck, and used in fumigations and decoctions against hexes (ch. 10; see [the amulet herbs](https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/the-amulet-herbs)).

## What does modern science say?

No established effect.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **ajugarin**: clerodane diterpenes
- **iridoid glycosides**: 
- **the resinous oil**: which gives the pine scent

**Mechanism.** *Ajuga chamaepitys*, sister to Canale’s *iva artetica*: anti-inflammatory diterpenes in animals, nothing established in people; its old use for gout rests on a diuretic bitterness.

**Dose.** Safe at the tea doses of the herbals.

**Standing.** No monograph.

## What lore surrounds it?

Grieve records that ground pine “was formerly regarded almost as a specific in gouty and rheumatic affections, the young tops, dried and reduced to powder being employed. It formed an ingredient of the once famous Portland Powder.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Calls the chamaepitys “abiga” in Latin, “because it promotes abortion,” and says some know it as “incense of the earth”: its branches are a cubit long and have the odour and blossoms of the pine; and a wine was made by boiling its wood, or germander’s, in must, with ten drachms of the flower to a congius.

**Culpeper.** Mars owns the herb: the decoction prevails against the strangury and the obstructions of the liver and spleen, and pills were made of its powder with the pulp of figs; it is “so powerful upon those feminine parts, that it is utterly forbidden for women with child”; and it is “a special remedy for the poison of the aconites.”

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 24.20, 14.19, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Culpeper, N. (1653). *The Complete Herbal*, “Ground Pine, Or Chamepitys.” Project Gutenberg #49513.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Bugle, Yellow.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/bugley83.html
- Israili, Z. H., and Lyoussi, B. (2009). “Ethnopharmacology of the plants of genus *Ajuga*.” *Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences* 22.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.