Moonwort
Lunaria
- Known today as
- The small fern Botrychium lunaria.
- Kind
- Plant, in 1 older authority
- Constituents
- flavonoids, tannins
- Earliest authority here
- Culpeper (1616–1654)
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online search · GBIF search · Wikidata search
Revised October 1, 2026: An older authority added from a text read in full. Version 1, first published September 25, 2026.
Moonwort: what was it used for?
A wound herb, binding and drying.
Moonwort: what does modern science say?
No established effect.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- Mechanism
- Botrychium lunaria, a small fern: a mild astringent with no distinctive chemistry, whose fame is for unshoeing horses that trod on it and opening locks, not for medicine.
- Toxic dose
- No toxicity recorded.
- Standing
- No monograph.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). The Folk-lore of Plants. Verified against its record · doi:10.1086/274955
Constituent names open the compound’s record at PubChem, and “ChEMBL” beside a name opens its record at ChEMBL, the European Bioinformatics Institute’s database of bioactive molecules. Where a mechanism line was checked against ChEMBL (ChEMBL 37, read 1 October 2026), the check is shown with the measured value and its source paper, or says plainly that nothing has been measured. Doses are as the references give them, for description only; this is not medical advice. Each source carries the result of its check against Crossref, PubMed, or the authority’s page: see Verification.
Moonwort: what lore surrounds it?
Said to open locks and to draw the shoes from horses that trod on it; Culpeper records the belief.
The belief that moonwort could draw the shoes from horses that trod on it was taken seriously enough to explain real losses: English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell of the Earl of Essex’s cavalry losing some thirty horseshoes crossing moonwort-covered ground in Devonshire, and witches were said to prize the plant because it could pass iron locks to open stable and house doors. Alchemists took moonwort as the emblem of the “white work,” the albedo stage of the Great Work, for what they read as its silvery, celestial vitality.
Moonwort: what did the older authorities say?
- Culpeper
- The Moon owns it: cold and drying more than adder’s tongue, boiled in red wine it stays fluxes and bleeding, and it goes into the oils and balsams for green wounds; “Moonwort is an herb which (they say) will open locks, and unshoe such horses as tread upon it,” and he reports thirty horseshoes found pulled from the Earl of Essex’s horses on White Down near Tiverton, “no reason known.”
Sources
- Culpeper, N. (1652). The English Physitian. Primary text
- Occult World, on moonwort. Book, seen in reviews
- Culpeper, N. (1653). The Complete Herbal, “Moonwort.” Project Gutenberg #49513. Primary text
Verification
- Checked
- October 1, 2026
- Passes
- Every sentence read against its sources, in the pass over the remaining 343 entries
- The Standing line checked against the authority it names (EMA, WHO, FDA, CITES, Commission E)
- Every dated or regulatory claim checked by category across the database
- Each quotation from the older authorities checked word for word against the text, read in full
- Sources
- 4 cited: 1 verified against its record, 2 primary text, 1 book, seen in reviews.
- Corrections
- None were needed.
What was checked, how, and what was found is set out on the Verification page. A checked source is one whose record was found; it does not make the entry medical advice.
Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published September 25, 2026 · last revised October 1, 2026
- Chicago
“Moonwort.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 1, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/moonwort.
- MLA
“Moonwort.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 1 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/moonwort. Accessed 8 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Moonwort. (2026, October 1). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/moonwort
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See Also
Sharing flavonoids, tannins
Buphthalmum salicifolium · Hepatica nobilis · Capsella bursa-pastoris · Euphrasia officinalis · Ficaria verna · Plantago major · Sempervivum tectorum
Also in Nicholas Culpeper
Motherwort in Nicholas Culpeper · Masterwort and angelica in Nicholas Culpeper · Periwinkle in Nicholas Culpeper · Madder in Nicholas Culpeper · everything Nicholas Culpeper names →
Drawing on the same sources: Culpeper, Thiselton-Dyer
Mustard seed · Meadow saffron · Olive oil and holy water · the bibliography →
Nearby in the alphabet
Morel (hollow spring mushroom) · Moly (Unidentified) · Mithridate (the forerunner of theriac) · Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) · Mistletoe (especially when found on oak) · Mullein (Verbascum thapsus) · The Miraculous Medal
Historical description, not medical advice.