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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-739
Self Heal
Prunella vulgaris
Self Heal is a low, sprawling perennial that forms a dense mat of grey-green foliage topped with purple flower spikes from late spring through summer, native across most of North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa. Its common name comes from centuries of use as a wound and sore-throat remedy, and laboratory testing has since confirmed antibacterial activity in the plant. The leaves are edible raw or cooked, mildly bitter until the tannins wash out, and the flowers draw bumblebees, butterflies and the clouded sulphur butterfly through a bloom season that runs May to September. It thrives in damp ground and shrugs off mowing, which is exactly how it turns into a low-growing lawn form in turf that stays moist.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun · Partial Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 3–9
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Dry · Well-Drained · Moist
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- 5.4–8
- Plant type
- Perennial
- Mature height
- 8–20 in
- Mature spread
- 12 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Stolon
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Agrimony
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Alfalfa
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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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