# Lungwort (Pulmonaria officinalis)

**Pulmonaria**

**Known today as.** *Pulmonaria officinalis*. A woodland perennial with white-spotted leaves and flowers that open pink and turn blue.

Kind: Plant

## What was it used for?

The leaves used as an expectorant and soothing remedy for coughs and complaints of the lungs; its name *officinalis* marks it as a recognized apothecary’s drug.

## What does modern science say?

The spots are air pockets just beneath the leaf surface that probably help to cool it, and have nothing to do with human lungs; no controlled evidence supports the traditional use.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **mucilage**: 
- **allantoin**: 
- **rosmarinic acid**: 
- **silicic acid**: 

**Mechanism.** A borage relative whose mucilage soothes a cough and whose spotted leaf was read as a lung: there is no expectorant principle, and the plant, unlike most of its family, carries no detectable pyrrolizidine alkaloids in most analyses.

**Dose.** Safe at tea doses.

**Standing.** No monograph; dropped from the pharmacopoeias.

## What lore surrounds it?

The white-spotted leaves were read by the doctrine of signatures as diseased lung in plant form, the plant’s own sign of what it was sent to cure.

## Sources

- Morris Arboretum, “Plant Names Tell Their Stories: *Pulmonaria*.”
- Wichtl, M. (2004). *Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals*, 3rd ed., “Pulmonariae herba.”

---

*Lungwort.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-27. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/lungwort

Historical description, not medical advice.