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Plant · P-664
Hoja Santa
Piper auritum
Hoja Santa is a large-leaved tropical perennial whose heart-shaped leaf smells of aniseed and gives it another name, root beer plant. The leaf is used as a wrapper and seasoning rather than a bulk green - tamale dough is packed in it, fish and meat are baked or smoked in it, and it goes shredded into soups and sauces across Mexico and Central America - but it wilts within minutes of cutting, so it works best planted close to the kitchen. It spreads readily by both rhizome and bird-carried seed and will form a thicket if left alone, and its leaf oil is roughly half safrole, a compound removed from commercial root beer for its carcinogenic risk, so it belongs in the kitchen as a culinary herb rather than something to take in concentrated medicinal doses.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Partial Sun · Shade
- USDA zone
- USDA 8–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moist
Vertical layer
Shrub- Soil pH
- 5.6–6.5
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 3.9–6 ft
- Mature spread
- 3.9–6 ft
- Plant spacing
- 3.9–6 ft
- Root type
- Rhizome
- Spread pattern
- Both
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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