# Sandy everlasting (Helichrysum arenarium)

*Immortelle; yellow chaste weed; old pharmacy *Flos Stoechados citrini* or *Flos Stoechados*; *Gnaphalium arenarium* L.; *Helichrysum arenarium* (L.) Moench; in pharmacy *Helichrysi flos**

**Known today as.** *Helichrysum arenarium*, a perennial of the family Asteraceae, eight to thirty centimetres high, with erect, greyish-white woolly stems and leaves, growing in dry sandy places from the Netherlands, southern Sweden, and Estonia south to southern Germany, Bulgaria, and western Kazakhstan. Its flower heads are two to five centimetres across, the bracts “yellow to reddish-orange, shining,” and, as Flora Europaea notes, the plant is not sweet-smelling. The dried flower heads are the drug.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** Not for those allergic to plants of the Asteraceae (Compositae) family, nor under eighteen. Because it may stimulate the secretion of bile, the European agency does not recommend it in obstruction of the bile duct, cholangitis, liver disease, or gallstones.

## What was it used for?

A remedy of the gall bladder. The European Medicines Agency’s assessment report records it in Lithuanian pharmacy regulations of 1904, 1911, and 1914, in the Soviet State Pharmacopoeia from its seventh edition of 1937 to its eleventh of 1990, and in Polish official medicine from the 1930s, where it went into the cholagogue tea, *Species Cholagogae*, still in the Polish Pharmacopoeia of 2014. A Polish manual of 1955 gave its decoction for gallstones and inflammation of the gall bladder with jaundice, and the German Standard License of 1986 gave the tea “For supportive treatment of non-inflammatory gallbladder complaints.”

## What does modern science say?

The European Medicines Agency’s herbal committee accepts the flower as a traditional herbal medicine, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” in digestive disorders with a feeling of fullness and bloating (monograph of 2016). Its assessment report finds three kinds of flavonoids in the flower heads, among them flavanones such as naringenin and its glucosides, with the phenolic acids caffeic, chlorogenic, and ferulic acid and the coumarins scopoletin, umbelliferone, and aesculetin. It found no clinical trials, only clinical observations in old Russian literature on its use in gall-bladder disease.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **naringenin**: among the flavanones, with its glucosides
- **chlorogenic acid**: with caffeic and ferulic acid
- **scopoletin**: a coumarin, with umbelliferone and aesculetin
- **aesculetin**: 

**Mechanism.** It may stimulate the secretion of bile, the European agency notes.

**Standing.** European Union herbal monograph (2016): traditional use, “exclusively based upon long-standing use,” in digestive disorders with fullness and bloating.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its flavonoid glycosides were named helichrysin A and B by Hänsel and Heise, who isolated them; later work showed helichrysin B to be salipurposide and separated helichrysin A into two isomeric forms, the assessment report records.

## Sources

- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Helichrysi flos (Sandy everlasting)*. EMA/HMPC/41108/2015, 5 April 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Helichrysi flos*. EMA/HMPC/41109/2015, 5 April 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *European Union herbal monograph on Helichrysi flos (Sandy everlasting)*. EMA/HMPC/41108/2015, 5 April 2016.
- European Medicines Agency, Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products. *Assessment report on Helichrysi flos*. EMA/HMPC/41109/2015, 5 April 2016.

---

*Sandy everlasting.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-16. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/sandy-everlasting

Historical description, not medical advice.