# Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus)

*Cramp bark, snowball tree, king’s crown, high cranberry, highbush cranberry, red elder, rose elder, water elder, May rose, Whitsun rose, dog rowan tree, silver bells, Whitsun bosses, gaitre berries; *Viburnum opulus* L.*

**Known today as.** *Viburnum opulus*, a shrub five to ten feet high of English copses and hedgerows, rare in Scotland, and native also to low ground in the eastern United States; Grieve places it in the elder’s family, Caprifoliaceae. Its flat heads of white flowers have an outer ring of large showy blossoms that are sterile, around small fertile ones, and are followed by drooping clusters of shining, translucent red berries. The name comes from Gueldersland, the Dutch province where it was first cultivated. The bark, sold as cramp bark, is the drug; Grieve gives its active principle as a bitter glucoside, viburnine.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** None of the sources read for this entry reports on its safety; Grieve calls the fresh berries edible but too bitter to be palatable.

## What was it used for?

An antispasmodic, as its name says. Grieve records cramp bark as used in herbal practice for nervous complaints and debility, “cramps and spasms of all kinds,” convulsions and lockjaw, palpitation, and rheumatism, and in the American National Formulary as a nerve sedative and antispasmodic in asthma and hysteria. Smith found the Pillager Ojibwe using the inner bark of the American variety as a physic and drinking its tea “to cure cramps in the stomach.”

## What does modern science say?

No European monograph for it was found for this entry, and the searches of Europe PMC made for it found no clinical trial of the bark; recent work concerns its fruit as a food. Grieve wrote that its constituents match those of black haw, the related American species, but that its properties are considered much weaker; Smith recorded the same view among white physicians, that it was the same as black haw, “only less potent.”

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **viburnine**: a bitter glucoside, the active principle by Grieve’s account
- **tannin**: 
- **valerianic acid**: 

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

**Standing.** There is no European monograph, and no clinical trial of the bark was found for this entry. Cramp bark was once in the United States Pharmacopoeia and later in the National Formulary.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard records that in England its flowers are dedicated to Whitsuntide. Grieve notes that the dried berries, which turn black, have been used to make ink, and the wood, like the spindle tree’s, for skewers.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Grieve, *A Modern Herbal* (1931).** Grieve identifies Chaucer’s ‘gaitre-beries,’ among the plants that “shal be for your hele,” to “picke hem right as they grow and ete hem in,” with this shrub’s berries; but, she adds, in spite of Chaucer they are too bitter to eat fresh. In Siberia they were fermented with flour and a spirit distilled from them, in Norway and Sweden they flavoured a paste of honey and flour, and in Canada they made a piquant jelly in place of cranberries.

## Sources

- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Guelder Rose.” As published on botanical.com.
- Smith, H. H. (1932). *Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians*, Highbush Cranberry. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4. Project Gutenberg, 49527.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “GUELDER ROSE.” Project Gutenberg, 44638.
- Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Guelder Rose.” As published on botanical.com.

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

Historical description, not medical advice.