Photo: Eric Hunt, CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
False Unicorn Root
Chamaelirium luteum
Also known as False Unicorn, Fairy Wand, Devil's Bit, Helonias
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦For generations, root doctors and midwives of the Appalachian woodlands turned to false unicorn root as a trusted friend for women's cycles, calling it by its old apothecary name, helonias, and treasuring it as a uterine tonic. Cherokee and Catawba healers used the root for reproductive complaints long before it caught the attention of nineteenth century Eclectic physicians, who came to rank it among their most valued herbs for menstrual irregularity and threatened miscarriage. In smaller doses it also served as a bitter tonic to rouse a sluggish digestion before meals. Today it remains one of the most storied roots in American herbalism, even as its slow growth and popularity have made truly wild plants scarce.
How to grow & use it
✦The full apothecary for False Unicorn Root
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“For the cycles that feel adrift, the old-time root the herb women called their most faithful friend.”
Chamaelirium luteum is dioecious, meaning each plant is either male or female, a trait unusual enough among woodland wildflowers that early botanists took special notice of it. The name false unicorn distinguishes it from true unicorn root (Aletris farinosa), an entirely different plant with a similar reputation but a fringed, not smooth, flower spike.
False unicorn root is at risk from overharvesting, so choose cultivated roots rather than wild-dug ones. In excess its saponins can cause nausea or stomach upset, and its traditional use around pregnancy is unproven, so unsupervised use during pregnancy or nursing isn't advisable.