Catnip

Nepeta cataria

Also: Catmint, Catswort, Field balm

Warming and coolingDryingRelaxing

Settles a nervous stomach in children and grown-ups alike.

A soft, gray-green mint with heart-shaped, downy leaves and spikes of small white flowers speckled with purple. Catnip eases nervousness that sits in the stomach, moves gas, cools a feverish child, and makes a mild cup for bedtime.

Energetics: Warming and cooling, drying, relaxing
Taste: Pungent, aromatic, acrid
Family: Lamiaceae (mint family)
Parts used: Leaves and flowering tops

Medicinal uses 5

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Traditional useLab and mechanism studiesClinical studies

Anxiety & stressTLC
Calms nervousness that rises from the stomach, the fluttery, queasy kind of worry.
Indigestion & bloatingTLC
Moves gas, eases bloating, and soothes colicky bellies.
FeverTLC
Drunk warm, relaxes the body so a fever can break; a classic for feverish children.
Trouble sleepingTLC
A gentle bedtime cup on its own or added to stronger sleep formulas.
Tension headacheTLC
Helps headaches that follow a heavy or poorly digested meal.

Preparations

Covered tea, sweet glycerites and elixirs, and worry blends.

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Cautions

Gentle enough for children, though it makes them sleepier than it makes adults.
A good choice for people who react to chamomile, since catnip sits in a different plant family.

Medication interactions

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Pregnancy & breastfeeding

PregnancyAvoid

Catnip has a history of bringing on menstruation and carries traces of pulegone, so it stays out of pregnancy. Ginger and peppermint suit a pregnant stomach better.

BreastfeedingAvoid

Its sedative action could reach a nursing baby, and the research is thin.

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Folklore

Nepeta may take its name from Nepete, an Etruscan town where the plant grew. English cottagers drank catnip tea before Chinese tea reached Britain. The pull it has on cats comes from nepetalactone, and responding to it is an inherited trait: roughly two cats in three roll, rub, and drool, while the rest ignore it. In lab tests the same compound repelled mosquitoes better than DEET.

How to grow

An easy, drought-tolerant perennial for full sun and lean soil. It self-sows, and neighborhood cats will flatten young plants, so cage them until they size up. Harvest leafy tops just as flowering begins.

In the wild

Native to Europe and western Asia, now wild along fence lines, roadsides, and old homesteads across North America.

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