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.