Photo: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
St. John's Wort
Hypericum perforatum
Also known as Tipton's Weed, Klamath Weed, Goatweed, Chase-devil
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦St. John's Wort takes its name from St. John the Baptist, since its cheerful yellow flowers open right around his feast day in late June. For centuries, European folk healers pressed the fresh buds into oil until it turned a deep, wine red, calling it the blood of St. John, and rubbed it on cuts, burns, and aching joints. Bundles of the flowering herb were hung over doorways and windows on Midsummer's Eve, believed to ward off illness and bad luck through the darkest turn of the year. Herbalists have long turned to it as a gentle companion for the low spirits and restless nerves that seem to settle in when the days grow short.
How to grow & use it
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“For the long, golden evenings of midsummer, when the light lingers and the spirits could use a little lifting.”
Hold a leaf up to the light and it looks freckled with tiny pinpricks, which is exactly where the plant's Latin name perforatum comes from. Those are actually translucent oil glands, not holes at all, and they are the same glands that give the flowers their deep red pigment when crushed.
St. John's Wort speeds up how the liver clears many drugs, weakening hormonal birth control, blood thinners like warfarin, antidepressants, and immunosuppressants. Combined with SSRIs or other serotonin-affecting medicines it can cause serotonin syndrome, and it can increase sun sensitivity. Avoid it during pregnancy and breastfeeding, and don't combine it with other medications without medical advice.