# Wild garlic (Allium ursinum)

*Ramsons; *herba salutaris**

**Known today as.** *Allium ursinum*. A broad-leaved, strongly garlic-scented woodland plant that carpets damp ground with white starry flowers each spring.

Kind: Plant

> **Caution.** Its leaves are easily confused with poisonous lookalikes; crush and smell before eating.

## What was it used for?

Eaten as a spring green and flavoring since prehistory, and taken as a general tonic, *herba salutaris*, “the healing herb,” by Celtic, Gaelic, Teutonic, and Roman herbalists alike.

## What does modern science say?

Like cultivated garlic it contains allicin and related sulfur compounds and is mildly antimicrobial. Foragers regularly and dangerously confuse its leaves with those of lily-of-the-valley and autumn crocus, which grow in similar places.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **alliin and allicin**: the sulfur chemistry of garlic, at lower levels
- **ajoene**: 
- **vinyldithiins**: 
- **quercetin and kaempferol glycosides**: 

**Mechanism.** Ramsons share garlic’s thiosulfinates, antibacterial and antiplatelet, in the leaf; the spring tonic of the Gaels had a vitamin C and sulfur rationale. Its yearly danger is confusion with lily-of-the-valley and autumn crocus by foragers, which kills.

**Dose.** A food; the mimics are the danger.

**Standing.** A food; garlic, not ramsons, has the EMA monograph.

## What lore surrounds it?

Its species name, *ursinum*, “of the bear,” is traditionally explained by the belief that bears, waking from hibernation, dig up and eat the bulbs to restore their strength. Its English name, ramsons, descends from the Old English *hramsa*, an older word for garlic.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Among the garlics Pliny notes one “that grows spontaneously in the fields, and is known by the name of ‘alum,’” which, boiled and scattered on sown ground, so stupefies the birds that eat it “as to be taken with the hand even.” He then adds the plant itself: “There is a wild garlic, too, generally known as ‘bear's’ garlic; it has exactly the smell of millet, with a very small head and large leaves.”

## Sources

- Wikipedia, “*Allium ursinum*.”
- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.33, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Sobolewska, D., et al. (2015). “*Allium ursinum*: botanical, phytochemical and pharmacological overview.” *Phytochemistry Reviews* 14.
- Brvar, M., et al. (2004). “Acute poisoning with autumn crocus (*Colchicum autumnale* L.).” *Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift* 116.

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*Wild garlic.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/wild-garlic

Historical description, not medical advice.