Mouse-ear hawkweed
Mouse-ear, pilosella; the medieval Auricula muris, mouse’s ear; Pilosella officinarum, formerly Hieracium pilosella of Linnaeus; in pharmacy Pilosellae herba cum radice
- Known today as
- Pilosella officinarum, a small hawkweed of sunny banks, walls, and dry pastures, which Grieve says is told from every other British plant of its order by its creeping runners, “thrown out in the same manner as in the strawberry,” its rosettes of hairy undivided leaves, grey-green above and hoary beneath, and its single lemon-yellow flowers on stems a few inches high. The heads, about an inch across, have some fifty florets, the outer ones striped purple beneath, and they open, she says, at eight in the morning and close about two in the afternoon, from May to September. The whole flowering herb with its root is the medicine.
- Kind
- Plant, in 2 older authorities
- Constituents
- umbelliferone, luteolin, apigenin, and 1 more
- Earliest authority here
- Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654)
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online · GBIF · Wikidata
Caution. Not for anyone sensitive to plants of the daisy family, Asteraceae, nor for anyone under eighteen, for want of data, nor where a reduced fluid intake is advised. Fever, painful urination, spasms, or blood in the urine call for a doctor.
Mouse-ear hawkweed: what was it used for?
An astringent and wound herb. Its juice is less bitter and more astringent than that of its milky relatives, Grieve explains, and for that astringency it was much used in the Middle Ages as Auricula muris; she calls it a good remedy for whooping cough, “for which, indeed, it has been regarded as a specific,” and for all affections of the lungs, and the powdered leaves an astringent for bleeding. Culpeper gives the juice in wine for the jaundice “although of long continuance,” and the herb as “a special remedy against the stone,” for dropsy with succory and centaury, and as “a singular wound herb for wounds both inward and outward.”
Mouse-ear hawkweed: what does modern science say?
The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the herb with its root as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for the relief of minor urinary complaints, taken with a sufficient intake of fluid to increase the amount of urine (monograph of 2024). Its assessment report lists hydroxycoumarins, chiefly umbelliferone, flavonoids including luteolin and apigenin glucosides, tannins, triterpenoids, and caffeic and chlorogenic acids. None of the old uses for the lungs, the jaundice, or wounds appears in the monograph.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- umbelliferone ChEMBLchief of the hydroxycoumarins
- luteolinas glucosides, with apigenin
- apigenin ChEMBL
- chlorogenic acid ChEMBLwith caffeic acid
- Mechanism
- Not established in the sources read for this entry.
- Standing
- European Union herbal monograph (2024): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for minor urinary complaints.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. European Union herbal monograph on Pilosellae herba cum radice (Mouse-ear hawkweed). EMA/HMPC/493453/2023, 20 November 2024. Read in full · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. Assessment report on Pilosellae herba cum radice. EMA/HMPC/493454/2023, 20 November 2024. Read in part · the text read
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.
Mouse-ear hawkweed: what lore surrounds it?
Its English name is the medieval Latin one, and Drayton paired it with shepherd’s purse: “To him that hath a flux, of Shepherd’s Purse he gives, And Mouse-ear unto him whom some sharp rupture grieves.” The hawkweeds as a whole, Folkard writes, took their name from an ancient notion that hawks cleared their eyesight with them, which Gerard repeated, saying hawks were reported to clear their sight by putting the juice into their eyes; the Greeks held the plants holy as belonging to a sacred bird, and they were thought good for the eyes and against the bites of serpents and scorpions.
Mouse-ear hawkweed: what did the older authorities say?
- Nicholas Culpeper
- “The Moon owns this herb also; and though authors cry out upon Alchymists, for attempting to fix quicksilver by this herb and Moonwort, a Roman would not have judged a thing by the success.” The apothecaries of Italy, he says, made a syrup of the juice with sugar, given for the cough and phthisic and “singularly good for ruptures or burstings,” and the green herb bound on a cut “doth quickly solder the lips thereof.”
- John Parkinson, as Grieve quotes him
- Mouse-ear given to a horse “will cause that he shall not be hurt by the smith that shooeth him,” and skilful shepherds kept their flocks from pastures where it abounds “lest they grow sicke and leane and die quickly after.”
Sources
- Grieve, M. A Modern Herbal, “Hawkweed, Mouse-Ear.” As published on botanical.com. Read in full · the text read
- Culpeper, N. The Complete Herbal, “Mouse-Ear.” Project Gutenberg, 49513. Read in part · the text read
- Folkard, R. (1884). Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics, “Hawkweed.” Project Gutenberg, 44638. Read in part · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. European Union herbal monograph on Pilosellae herba cum radice (Mouse-ear hawkweed). EMA/HMPC/493453/2023, 20 November 2024. Read in full · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. Assessment report on Pilosellae herba cum radice. EMA/HMPC/493454/2023, 20 November 2024. Read in part · the text read
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
- Sources
- 5 cited: 2 read in full, 3 read in part.
- 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.
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Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published October 16, 2026
- Chicago
“Mouse-ear hawkweed.” In Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1. The Thinking Press, 2026–. Last modified October 16, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/mouse-ear-hawkweed.
- MLA
“Mouse-ear hawkweed.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 16 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/mouse-ear-hawkweed. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Mouse-ear hawkweed. (2026, October 16). In B. C. P. Statema (Ed.), Materia medica (Version 1). The Thinking Press. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/mouse-ear-hawkweed
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See Also
Sharing umbelliferone, luteolin, apigenin
Ferula gummosa · Passiflora incarnata · Ajuga iva · Chamaemelum nobile · Matricaria chamomilla · Helichrysum arenarium · Tilia cordata · Birch leaf
Also in Nicholas Culpeper
Oak bark in Nicholas Culpeper · Motherwort in Nicholas Culpeper · Periwinkle in Nicholas Culpeper · Moonwort in Nicholas Culpeper · everything Nicholas Culpeper names →
Also in M. Grieve
Oat in M. Grieve · Melilot in M. Grieve · Pasque flower in M. Grieve · Mayapple in M. Grieve · everything M. Grieve names →
Drawing on the same sources: Grieve, Culpeper, Folkard
Mugwort · Mullein · Niter, pills of · Mustard seed · Myrobalans · the bibliography →
Historical description, not medical advice.
