The Herb Named for Health, and Loved by Cats

Valerian, Valeriana officinalis, is a tall perennial of damp meadows and stream-banks, bearing clusters of pale pink flowers and a root of famously heavy, earthy odour. Its name is usually derived from the Latin valere, to be strong or well, marking its ancient standing as a healing plant. The dried root strongly attracts cats, as catnip does, and rats too are drawn to it; one telling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has him carry valerian to lure the rats from the town. Its long domestic reputation as a plant for troubled sleep and frayed nerves is recorded here as folk history, not as medical advice.

Valerian's reputation as a nerve remedy persisted into the twentieth century: it was reportedly issued as a calming draught to soldiers suffering shock and shattered nerves during the First World War, a use of the period's conventional pharmacopoeia rather than a folk survival. Modern clinical trials of valerian root for insomnia and anxiety have produced mixed and generally modest results, some showing a small benefit over placebo and others none at all, so that current medical opinion regards the plant's ancient calming reputation as plausible but not firmly established, a more cautious verdict than either its old praise or its herbal-shop marketing usually allows.