Centaury

Centaurium erythraea

Also: Common centaury, European centaury

CoolingDryingTonifying

A pink-flowered gentian cousin for a poor appetite and slow digestion.

A small, upright annual or biennial with a basal rosette of leaves and clusters of starry pink flowers on branching stems. Centaury is a strong cooling bitter that wakes the appetite, sets the digestive juices flowing, and helps the body draw more nourishment from food; it can stand in for gentian, which is overharvested in the wild.

Energetics: Cooling, drying, toning
Taste: Very bitter
Family: Gentianaceae (gentian family)
Parts used: Flowering tops

Medicinal uses 3

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Traditional useLab and mechanism studiesClinical studies

Sluggish liver & digestionTLC
Taken a few minutes before meals, it wakes a poor appetite and gets saliva, stomach acid, and bile flowing.
Indigestion & bloatingTLC
Clears the heavy, slow, incomplete digestion of a stomach that needs prompting.
Depletion & mineral needsTLC
By improving digestion, helps depleted, underweight people draw more nourishment from their food.

Preparations

Drop doses of bitters before meals, bitter tea, and warmed bitters blends.

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Cautions

Strongly cooling and drying; if you run cold and dry, blend it with warming herbs such as ginger.
Leave it out with active stomach or duodenal ulcers.

Medication interactions

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Pregnancy & breastfeeding

PregnancyAsk your practitioner

Centaury has not been studied in pregnancy; check with your practitioner before taking it.

BreastfeedingAsk your practitioner

Little is known about it in breast milk; check with your practitioner first.

Folklore

Centaurium is named for Chiron, the wise centaur of Greek myth who taught medicine to Asclepius and was said to have dressed his own wound with the plant. The species name erythraea means red, for its pink flowers. In the 1930s Edward Bach made centaury one of his flower remedies, for gentle people who find it hard to say no.

How to grow

A small annual or biennial for sun and dry, lean, well-drained soil. Sow in spring and barely cover the fine seed; it is slow to establish but self-sows once settled. Cut the flowering tops in summer.

In the wild

Dry grassland, dunes, chalk downs, and open woods of Europe, western Asia, and North Africa, and naturalized in parts of North America, especially along the West Coast.

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