Five-Leaf Grass

Medical Herbs Catalogue


Five-Leaf Grass

Botanical Name: Potentilla reptans (LINN.)
Family: N.O. Rosaceae

Synonyms: Cinquefoil. Five Fingers. Five-Finger Blossom. Sunkfield. Synkefoyle.
Parts Used: Herb, root.








Medicinal Action and Uses: stringent, febrifuge. The roots have a bitterish, styptic, slightly sweetish taste and have been employed medicinally since the time of Hippocrates and Dioscorides.

They were used to cure the intermittent fevers which prevailed in marshy, ill-drained lands, and especially ague.

Dioscorides stated that one leaf cured a quotidian, three a tertian, and four a quarten ague. Culpepper says: 'It is an especial herb used in all inflammations and fevers, whether infectious or pestilential or, among other herbs, to cool and temper the blood and humours in the body; as also for all lotions, gargles and infections; for sore mouths, ulcers, cancers, fistulas and other foul or running sores.

'The juice drank, about four ounces at a time, for certain days together, cureth the quinsey and yellow jaundice, and taken for 30 days cureth the falling sickness. The roots boiled in vinegar and the decoction held in the mouth easeth toothache.

'The juice or decoction taken with a little honey removes hoarseness and is very good for coughs.

'The root boiled in vinegar, being applied, heals inflammations, painful sores and the shingles. The same also, boiled in wine, and applied to any joint full of pain, ache or the gout in the hands, or feet or the hip-joint, called the sciatica, and the decoction thereof drank the while, doth cure them and easeth much pain in the bowels.

'The roots are also effectual to reduce ruptures, being used with other things available to that purpose, taken either inwardly or outwardly, or both; as also bruises or hurts by blows, falls or the like, and to stay the bleeding of wounds in any part, inward or outward.' Robinson's Herbal directs that the roots are to be dug up in April and the outer bark taken off and dried, the rest not being used.

To make the decoction, it is directed that 1 1/2 OZ. of the root be boiled in a quart of water down to a pint. This decoction is recommended not only as a remedy for diarrhoea, and of avail to stop bleeding of the lungs or bronchial tubes and bleeding at the nose, but as a good eyewash, as well as a gargle in relaxed sore throat.

The juice of the root, mixed with wheat bread, boiled first, is recommended as a good styptic.

A scruple of the powder in wine is the dose prescribed to cure the ague.

In modern Herbal Medicine, the dried herb is more generally now employed, for its astringent and febrifuge properties.

An infusion of 1 OZ. of the herb to a pint of boiling water is used in wineglassful doses for diarrhoea and looseness of the bowels, and for other complaints for which astringents are usually prescribed, and it is employed externally as an astringent lotion and as a gargle for sore throat.

Preparation and Dosage: Fluid extract, 1/2 to 2 drachms.

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