Pink rock-rose
Cretan rock-rose, ladanum cistus; holly rose of Gerard and Parkinson; Cistus creticus of Linnaeus; the Greek kistos and ledon of Dioscorides; in pharmacy Cisti cretici herba
- Known today as
- Cistus creticus, a shrub of the family Cistaceae, from whose leaves and other parts, Folkard says, is secreted the resin ladanum, prized as a perfume. The herb is the medicine.
- Kind
- Plant, in 2 older authorities
- Constituents
- labdane-type diterpenes, catechin, gallocatechin, and 1 more
- Earliest authority here
- Dioscorides (c. AD 40–90)
- In other databases
- Plants of the World Online · GBIF · Wikidata
Caution. Not for anyone under eighteen, for want of data. Breathlessness, fever, or purulent sputum during use call for a doctor.
Pink rock-rose: what was it used for?
For the cough, by modern standing; in antiquity, an astringent. Dioscorides gives the flowers of his kistos, pounded and drunk twice a day in sharp wine, for dysentery, and as a poultice on gangrenous sores and, with a stiff ointment, on burns and old ulcers. Its resin, ladanum, he calls astringent, warming, and softening, mixed with wine, myrrh, and oil of myrtle to stop the hair falling, and rubbed on with wine to make scars look better.
Pink rock-rose: 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,” for the relief of cough associated with a cold (monograph of 2025). Its assessment report finds terpenes, labdane-type diterpenes among them, and polyphenols including catechin, gallocatechin, and their dimeric and trimeric derivatives.
Pharmacognosy & Toxicology
- Constituents
- labdane-type diterpenesamong the terpenes
- catechinwith gallocatechin and their dimers and trimers, among the polyphenols
- gallocatechin
- ladanuma resin secreted by the leaves, by Folkard’s account
- Mechanism
- Not established in the sources read for this entry.
- Standing
- European Union herbal monograph (2025): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” for cough associated with a cold.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. European Union herbal monograph on Cisti cretici herba (Pink rock-rose). EMA/HMPC/150763/2015, 19 March 2025. Read in full · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. Assessment report on Cisti cretici herba. EMA/HMPC/150765/2015, 19 March 2025. 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.
Pink rock-rose: what lore surrounds it?
Folkard records that Cassianus Bassus derived the name from a Greek youth called Kistos, that Gerard and Parkinson called the plants holly roses, “a name which has become changed into Rock Roses,” and that ladanum, prized as a tonic but more as a perfume, was much used in the East for fumigation. In his day it was gathered with a kind of rake hung with leather thongs instead of teeth. Bacon, unlike Gerard, believed the goats: “There are some teares of trees, which are kembed from the beards of goats.”
Pink rock-rose: what did the older authorities say?
- Dioscorides
- He describes kistos as a shrub of rocky places with many low branches and round, rough leaves, and a second kind, ledon, with longer, darker leaves that gather a fat in spring. From this, he says, ladanum is made: goats feeding on the leaves carry the sticky fat away on their beards and thighs, and it is combed off, strained, and rolled into balls, or gathered by drawing cords across the shrubs.
- John Gerard, as Folkard reports him
- The story of the goats’ beards Gerard dismissed as a fable of the “Calohieros, that is to say, Greekish monkes, who, of very mockery, have foisted that fable among others extant in their workes.”
Sources
- Dioscorides. De materia medica, 1-126 and 1-128, in the modern English version of T. A. Osbaldeston and R. P. A. Wood (Johannesburg: Ibidis, 2000), after Goodyer’s translation of 1655. Internet Archive. Read in part · the text read
- Folkard, R. (1884). Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics, “Cistus.” Project Gutenberg, 44638. Read in part · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. European Union herbal monograph on Cisti cretici herba (Pink rock-rose). EMA/HMPC/150763/2015, 19 March 2025. Read in full · the text read
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. Assessment report on Cisti cretici herba. EMA/HMPC/150765/2015, 19 March 2025. 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
- 4 cited: 1 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.
Club members can point at a technical term in this entry, such as a constituent, an action, or a word of Jung’s, to read its definition from the source. The Club.
Cite This Entry
Version 1 · first published October 16, 2026
- Chicago
“Pink rock-rose.” 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/pink-rock-rose.
- MLA
“Pink rock-rose.” Materia Medica, edited by B. C. P. Statema, version 1, The Thinking Press, 16 Oct. 2026, thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/pink-rock-rose. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.
- APA
Pink rock-rose. (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/pink-rock-rose
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See Also
Sharing catechin
Also in Dioscorides
Psyllium in Dioscorides · Ox eye in Dioscorides · Raspberry leaf in Dioscorides · Orris in Dioscorides · everything Dioscorides names →
Drawing on the same sources: Folkard
Nearby in the alphabet
Plantain (Plantago major) · Pilgrim badges and ampullae · Pleurisy root · Pilewort · Poison fire coral (finger-like fungus of Korea, Japan, China, and Indonesia) · Picrorhiza · Pokeweed (the American pokeweed) · Periwinkle (the lesser periwinkle, a trailing evergreen with blue flowers)
Historical description, not medical advice.
