Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Lycopodium clavatum is a homeopathic single remedy. It is made from the spores of club moss, a low creeping plant. Homeopaths give it most often for gas, bloating and stomach upset.
The remedy is made by diluting the plant again and again, with hard shaking at each step. At 30C, the strength most shops sell, the plant has been diluted so far that none of it is left. What you swallow is a sugar pellet or a drop of alcohol and water.
Trials have not shown that it works better than a dummy pill. It does have a long and steady place in homeopathy. Long use in a tradition is not proof that something works, so we report the two apart on this page.
The honest answer is that no one has shown a way it could work. At 30C there is nothing of the plant left to act on your body.
Homeopathy rests on two ideas. The first is "like cures like": a substance that causes a symptom in a well person is said to treat that symptom in a sick person. The second is that water keeps a trace of what was once in it.
Neither idea fits what we know about chemistry. When people feel better, the likely reasons are the placebo effect (feeling better because you expect to), the long talk with the practitioner, and time passing.
You will see it sold in a few simple forms:
Sugar pellets or pills you let melt under the tongue. Liquid drops in a water and alcohol base. Tablets made with lactose (milk sugar).
Strengths are marked with a number and a letter, such as 6C, 30C or 200C. The higher the number, the more it has been diluted. Homeopaths call higher numbers "stronger", but there is less source material, not more.
Club moss spores have a long record in Europe. The fine powder was dusted on skin sores and used to stop pills sticking together.
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, tested the remedy in the early 1800s. It became one of the tradition's main remedies, used by homeopaths worldwide ever since. That standing sits inside one tradition only.
See a doctor if your symptoms last more than two weeks, keep coming back, or get worse. Get help the same day for severe belly pain, vomiting blood, black or tarry stools, or a fever with belly pain. Also see a doctor for weight loss you cannot explain, trouble swallowing, blood in the urine, or trouble passing urine. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or treating a child, check with a doctor before using any remedy.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Lycopodium clavatum is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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