Photo: Liné1, CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Reflexed Stonecrop
Sedum reflexum
Also known as Prick Madam, Trip Madam, Jenny's Stonecrop, Stone Orpine, Rock Stonecrop
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Reflexed stonecrop earned its old country name, prick madam, from generations of English cottage gardeners who tucked its sharp, lemony leaves into spring salads to wake up a sluggish appetite. The diarist and gardener John Evelyn praised it among the fashionable salad herbs of his day in Acetaria, his 1699 treatise on salad greens, noting its bracing, biting flavor. Like its cousin the houseleek, it was also planted along thatched roofs and stone walls in old European folk belief, thought to bring the household luck and stand watch against lightning. It has never been a grand medicinal herb, more a humble, everyday plant, valued as much for its cheerful hardiness as for its bite.
How to grow & use it
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“For a wall that blooms on its own, and a salad with a little surprise in it.”
Reflexed stonecrop regrows so readily from the smallest broken piece that old gardeners could start a whole wall planting just by pressing a single snapped stem into a crack between the stones.
Reflexed stonecrop is a mild, traditionally edible succulent, but it has always been used sparingly, a pinch or two of leaves rather than a plateful, since larger amounts of fresh sedum foliage can upset a sensitive stomach. Many stonecrops look alike, and some relatives are far more purgative or irritating, so never eat a wild sedum you cannot identify with certainty. Safety in pregnancy and nursing has not been studied, so it is best avoided then, and as always, it is wise to speak with a qualified herbalist or healthcare provider before using any plant medicinally.