# Melilot (Melilotus officinalis) *Yellow melilot, sweet clover, king’s clover, plaster clover, hart’s clover, sweet lucerne, wild laburnum; *Melilotus officinalis* of Linnaeus, with the white melilot, *Melilotus alba*; in pharmacy *Meliloti herba** **Known today as.** *Melilotus officinalis*, a branching herb of the legume family two to four feet high, of dry fields, roadsides, chalky banks, and railway embankments, with leaves in threes and long racemes of small sweet-scented yellow flowers, followed by broad, black, one-seeded, wrinkled pods. All the melilots, Grieve says, have a sweet smell in flower that grows stronger in drying, “somewhat like that of the Tonka bean,” because both contain coumarin, the scent of new-mown hay and woodruff. The dried flowering herb is the medicine. Kind: Plant > **Caution.** Not for anyone under eighteen, for want of data. The European agency asks for a doctor if signs of thrombophlebitis, hardening under the skin, sudden swelling of one or both legs, or heart or kidney failure appear, or if a skin inflammation worsens or becomes infected. Stomach complaints and allergic reactions have been reported. ## What was it used for? A plaster and fomentation for swellings. Grieve calls it aromatic, emollient, and carminative, and “Applied as a plaster, or in ointment, or as a fomentation, it is an old-fashioned country remedy for the relief of abdominal and rheumatic pains.” Gerard boiled it in sweet wine with egg yolk, linseed meal, marsh mallow roots, and hog’s grease for a poultice that “doth asswge and soften all manner of swellings,” and dropped the juice into the eyes to clear the sight; Culpeper, she reports, had the head washed with the distilled herb for loss of senses and apoplexy. A still-room book of 1651 puts melilot flowers into ‘a bath for Melancholy.’ ## What does modern science say? The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the herb as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” to relieve discomfort and heaviness of the legs from minor disorders of the veins, and for minor inflammation of the skin (monograph of 2017). Its assessment report finds coumarin at 0.3 to 0.9 per cent, formed during drying from glucosides of hydroxycinnamic acid, and the coumaric acid glycoside melilotoside. ## Pharmacognosy and toxicology - **coumarin**: 0.3 to 0.9 per cent, formed in drying from glucosides of hydroxycinnamic acid; the scent of new-mown hay - **melilotoside**: a coumaric acid glycoside **Mechanism.** Not established in the sources read for this entry. **Standing.** European Union herbal monograph (2017): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for heavy legs from minor venous disorders and minor skin inflammation. ## What lore surrounds it? The name, Grieve explains, is honey-lotus, from Latin *mel*, honey, the plants being great favourites of bees, and the deer that browse on it gave it the name hart’s clover. The dried herb scented snuff and tobacco, was laid among linen like lavender, and was packed with furs to keep the moths away. In Switzerland, she reports from Syme and Sowerby’s *English Botany*, the powdered herb, called ‘Zieger kraut,’ curd herb, was worked into the green cheese Schabzieger, where it stopped the putrefaction and let the cheese keep unchanged. ## What did the older authorities say? **Galen, as Grieve reports him.** He “used to prescribe Melilot plaster to his Imperial and aristocratic patients when they suffered from inflammatory tumours or swelled joints,” and the plaster, she adds, was still so used in parts of the Continent. **John Gerard, as Grieve quotes him.** Melilot was then a common crop that ran wild: “for certainty no part of the world doth enjoy so great plenty thereof as England and especially Essex,” where between Sudbury and Clare he saw many acres overgrown with it, so that “it doth not only spoil their land, but the corn also.” ## Sources - Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Melilot.” As published on botanical.com. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Meliloti herba (Melilot)*. EMA/HMPC/44166/2016, 21 November 2017. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Meliloti herba*. EMA/HMPC/44165/2016, 21 November 2017. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Meliloti herba (Melilot)*. EMA/HMPC/44166/2016, 21 November 2017. - European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Meliloti herba*. EMA/HMPC/44165/2016, 21 November 2017. - Grieve, M. *A Modern Herbal*, “Melilot.” As published on botanical.com. --- *Melilot.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-16. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/melilot Historical description, not medical advice.