Eden Apothecary · Herb Profile
Chelone glabra
Also known as Turtlehead
Pronounced Balmony: BAL-moh-nee. Chelone glabra: kee-LOH-nee GLAB-ruh.
Cool, dry, and intensely bitter: a hepatic bitter that rouses a torpid, bile-logged liver and rekindles a stalled appetite.
Avoid. No reliable modern safety data (Natural Medicines/WebMD advises avoidance). The flowers were also used traditionally by the Abenaki as an anti-fertility/contraceptive agent, and the herb carries bitter stimulant-laxative and cholagogue actions; the precautionary standard is to avoid during pregnancy.
Avoid. No reliable safety data during lactation (Natural Medicines/WebMD advises avoidance); bitter iridoid principles may transfer into milk.
Insufficient data; not established for children. Anthelmintic or cathartic-strength dosing risks griping and fluid loss. If used at all, only a low-dose bitter (a few drops of dilute tincture) under a qualified practitioner.
Intensely bitter; large or repeated doses are purgative and can cause griping, nausea, or watery stools. Being cooling and drying it depletes thin, cold, dry, or exhausted constitutions. Not a first-line self-care herb: the jaundice and hepatic disease it was historically used for are referral conditions today.
Avoid in pregnancy and lactation (see safety fields). Contraindicated where bile flow is obstructed (obstructing gallstones, bile-duct stricture, acute cholangitis) because of its cholagogue and choleretic action, and in bowel obstruction or acute inflammatory bowel disease because of its stimulant-laxative action in larger doses.
A native wetland and riparian perennial and a larval host plant for the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly. Not currently listed by United Plant Savers, but sensitive to wetland loss. Wildcraft sparingly and only from healthy stands; harvest aerial leaves rather than uprooting; prefer cultivated or garden-grown material.
Not a canonical biblical plant. Chelone glabra is native to eastern North America and enters herbal medicine through Native American (Iroquois, Cherokee, Abenaki) and 19th-century Eclectic/Physiomedical practice. Its folk name 'bitter herb' only thematically echoes the bitter herbs (maror) of Passover (Exodus 12:8), with no botanical identity.
The same herb can calm one person and wire another. Our free assessment reads your pattern across temperature, moisture and tone, then matches herbs to it.
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