Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Sweet cicely is a tall, soft, fern-leaved garden plant with a sweet anise taste. Cooks add it to tart fruit, such as rhubarb, to cut the sugar needed. As a medicine, it has almost no human evidence behind it.
It grows wild and in gardens across much of Europe. The leaves, green seeds and roots are all eaten. Folk names include sweet chervil, garden myrrh and British myrrh, after its warm, resin-like scent.
One warning matters more than the rest. Sweet cicely is in the carrot family, and some of its wild look-alikes are deadly. Poison hemlock and hemlock water dropwort grow in the same places.
Long use in kitchens and folk medicine is not proof that a plant works. It is not proof that it is safe either. You will not see that point repeated on the rest of this page.
No one has shown how sweet cicely works in the body, because almost no human studies exist.
Most of what is said comes from its main oil, anethole. In test-tube and animal work, anethole can relax gut muscle and ease wind. That work was mostly done on anise and fennel, not on sweet cicely.
In lab tests, extracts of the plant mop up free radicals (unstable molecules). Lab antioxidant scores do not tell you what happens in a person.
In cell studies, anethole acts weakly like the hormone oestrogen. Whether kitchen amounts do anything of the kind in people is unknown.
The sweetening effect is the one thing you can see for yourself. Anethole tastes sweet, so cooked fruit needs less sugar. That is a taste effect, not a drug effect.
Most people meet sweet cicely as a fresh kitchen herb, not as a supplement.
Common forms:
- Fresh leaves, chopped into stewed fruit, salads or cream. - Green unripe seeds, eaten whole or chopped for a stronger, sweeter hit. - Ripe dried seeds, used as a spice.
- The root, boiled as a vegetable or candied in older recipes. - Dried leaf, brewed as a tea. - Tinctures (alcohol extracts), sold by a few herbal suppliers.
An essential oil is rare and is not for swallowing. Capsules are uncommon. Sweet cicely is not a mainstream supplement, so products vary a lot in strength.
European herbals have mentioned sweet cicely for several hundred years. Writers such as Gerard and Culpeper listed it in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It was grown in monastery and cottage gardens. Folk use set it aside for coughs, wind and poor appetite. Some writers called it a gentle tonic for older people, and the boiled root was given to those recovering from illness.
In northern Europe it was valued as a sugar-sparing herb. Cooks stewed it with sour fruit when sugar was costly.
The seeds were also rubbed on oak floors and panels for scent and shine. None of this history is a reason to treat yourself with it.
Stop using it and see a doctor if you get a rash, itching or stomach pain that lasts.
Call emergency services if you have swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or trouble breathing. These are signs of a severe allergic reaction.
Get emergency help at once if you or a child has eaten a foraged carrot-family plant and then feels unwell. Warning signs include drooling, vomiting, muscle twitching, fits, confusion, a slow heartbeat (bradycardia) and trouble breathing. Take a piece of the plant with you if you can.
In the UK, the EU and the US, sweet cicely is treated as an ordinary food herb. It can also be sold as a food supplement or herbal tea. It is not a licensed medicine, so no health claim on a pack has been approved by a regulator.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
One email with the summary. We'll also send a short weekly evidence update — unsubscribe any time.
