Laburnum

Laburnum: what was it used for?

A poison rather than a medicine. King’s Dispensatory of 1898 records that Dr. Gray recommended its active principles for dyspepsia with bilious vomiting, the vomiting of children and of pregnancy, bronchial cough, and asthma, but adds that later trials did not support these recommendations. Grieve notes that cytisine was recommended in whooping cough and asthma, and that a 1916 trial of it against lice found it too dangerous to use, since the concentration needed risked absorption through the skin “with almost certain toxic consequences.”

Laburnum: what does modern science say?

The herb has no modern medicinal use in the sources read for this entry, but its alkaloid has one. Cytisine, which Grieve notes acts much like nicotine, is now used to help people stop smoking: a 2024 meta-analysis found that people taking it were significantly more likely to quit than those given placebo or usual care, and more likely than those given nicotine replacement, with mostly mild side effects such as abnormal dreams, nausea, and headache. A 2026 commentary records that the World Health Organization has added it to its Model List of Essential Medicines. These findings concern the purified alkaloid as a licensed medicine, not any preparation of the tree.

Laburnum: what did the older authorities say?

Grieve, A Modern Herbal (1931)

It reached England before 1597, when Gerard grew it in his garden under the names of Anagyris, Laburnum, and Bean Trefoil. Grieve also tells of the purple laburnum, a graft hybrid raised in Paris in 1828 by M. Adam, on which the branches below the graft bore yellow flowers and those above small purple ones, and sometimes one cluster bore both.