Lippia alba

What it is

Lippia alba (Mill.) N.E.Br. ex Britton & P.Wilson is a flowering shrub of the vervain family, Verbenaceae. It is a multi-branched plant that reaches about 1.5 metres, with leaves 1 to 3 centimetres long set in opposite pairs or in threes, and small flowers on spikes in white, pink or pale blue-purple. The leaves carry a strong scent, and that scent is the reason the plant is used.

Its names vary from place to place: bushy lippia and bushy matgrass in English, hierba negra, juanilama, pamporegano, poleo and pitiona in Spanish-speaking regions, and erva-cidreira in Brazil. The species has many botanical synonyms, among them Lantana alba and Camara alba.

Where it grows

The plant is native from southern Texas through Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to South America. It also grows in Australia and India, where it probably arrived through human introduction. It is widely grown as an ornamental for its foliage and flowers as well as an herb.

Tea and kitchen use

The leaves are customarily steeped into a tea. In Mexico they are also added to sauces, and a commercial produce supplier describes them as edible raw or cooked. The same listing mentions Oaxacan dishes that use the leaves, and a general reference names mole sauces from Oaxaca; neither gives a method, so no dish procedure is recorded here.

No source consulted describes the leaf being fermented, cured or used as a starter. Its place on this site is as an aromatic herb that appears in teas and sauces, not as a fermentation ingredient in its own right.

Aroma and chemical types

The essential oil does not have one fixed composition. Constituents listed for the species include geranial and neral (the two forms of citral), limonene, carvone, linalool, myrcene, caryophyllene, camphor, eucalyptol and others, and which of them dominate depends on the plant.

A Brazilian field trial of 16 genotypes from one germplasm collection, grown together in the Distrito Federal, sorted them into chemical types. Citral reached 56.7 per cent in the richest genotype and appeared alone and with limonene or myrcene. Carvone appeared only together with limonene, up to 46.9 per cent. Linalool appeared alone and with limonene, up to 89.8 per cent. Plants sold or gathered under the same name can therefore smell and taste quite different, and a leaf from one source is not a guide to another.

Traditional medicine

A review of the ethnobotany of the genus Lippia reports the plant in Brazilian traditional medicine as a remedy for stomach disorders and as an antiseptic. The USDA ethnobotanical database lists many folk uses for the species by country: stomach-ache in Mexico and Curacao, colds, flu, fever and chest colds in Trinidad, digestive complaints in Curacao, colitis and dyspepsia in Panama, and use as a nervine in Brazil. The entries are citations of older surveys and do not name the plant part used.

These are records of what people have done, not evidence that the plant works.

Safety and limits

No toxicity data for Lippia alba itself were found. A 2022 Brazilian review of the genus Lippia notes that intoxications can follow the ingestion of excessive amounts of these plants when they are used inappropriately, but that review covers the genus and its toxicity findings are not transferred to this species here. No dose, steeping time or safe limit for tea or sauce use was found.

Do not confuse the species with Lippia graveolens, Mexican oregano, which the USDA database also records. Because the oil's composition varies so much between plants, a leaf from an unfamiliar source should not be assumed to behave like one you know.