Angelica

Angelica archangelica L. belongs to Apiaceae (Umbelliferae), the carrot or parsley family, alongside fennel, caraway, lovage, celery, and the poisonous hemlocks, and was first published by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum in 1753 (Kew’s Plants of the World Online). Mrs Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (1931) calls it garden angelica and lists the older name Archangelica officinalis, which still appears on some labels. Sarker and Nahar (Current Medicinal Chemistry 2004) count more than 60 medicinal species in the genus Angelica, among them A. sinensis (dong quai), A. dahurica, A. gigas, and the North American A. atropurpurea, so the bare word “angelica” on a product says little. Kew’s distribution data list the species as native from Greenland and Iceland through the Faroe Islands, Scandinavia, Britain, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states to European Russia, western Siberia, and the North Caucasus, and as introduced in places such as Ireland and Belgium. Two subspecies are recognized: subsp. archangelica, which Teixidor-Toneu and colleagues (Journal of Ethnobiology 2020) describe along mountain streams, meadows, and willow thickets in Scandinavia, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland, and subsp. litoralis, a mainly coastal plant that Kew says has a sharper, more pungent smell and harder stems. Pharmakobotanik’s list of synonyms adds older German folk names such as Heiliggeistwurz (“Holy Ghost root”) and Engelbrustwurz.

Angelica grows fast and dies young. Kew describes an aromatic herb up to 2 m tall with a thick taproot and bright green, hollow stems sometimes tinged purple; leaves up to 70 cm long, divided two or three times into toothed leaflets, with broad sheathing bases; and globe-shaped umbels 10–14 cm across made of tiny white or greenish flowers about 4 mm wide. The fruits are straw-colored, prominently ridged schizocarps up to 9 mm long. Pharmakobotanik, a German pharmacognosy teaching site, adds that plants can reach 3 m, that the root is a short, stout rhizome with many side roots, that the leaf teeth end in small white points, and that plants live two to four years and die after flowering once, from June to August. Grieve noted that cutting off the flower heads prolongs its life. Its look-alikes are dangerous. The USDA Forest Service warns that water hemlock (Cicuta), which has been called the most poisonous plant in the north temperate zone, has leaflet veins that fork, with one branch ending in the notch between teeth, and chambered lower stems and upper roots. Ontario’s weed guide, describing the related purple angelica, notes that angelica’s veins run to the tips of the teeth and its umbels are globe-shaped rather than flat.

The medicinal part is the dried rhizome and roots, and the European Pharmacopoeia requires at least 2.0 ml of essential oil per kilogram; Pharmakobotanik says the commercial drug comes almost entirely from cultivation, mainly in Poland and the Netherlands. It puts the oil at about 0.35–1% of the root, dominated by monoterpenes: α-pinene (about 14–31%), β-phellandrene (13–28%), and α-phellandrene (2–14%), with musky macrocyclic lactones such as pentadecanolide largely responsible for the smell. Composition varies with origin: root oil from Italy was led by α-pinene (21.3%), δ-3-carene (16.5%), and limonene (16.4%) (Fraternale and colleagues, Journal of Medicinal Food 2014). The root also holds more than 20 furanocoumarins, including angelicin, archangelicin, bergapten, isoimperatorin, and xanthotoxin, plus the prenylated coumarins osthenol and osthole and the simple coumarin umbelliferone. EMA confirms that linear furanocoumarins (psoralen, xanthotoxin, and bergapten) and the angular angelicin are all detectable, and notes that fungal infection can raise the coumarin content of roots 20- to 200-fold. The fruits are richer still: samples from 64 Icelandic sites averaged 22.5 mg of furanocoumarins per gram, mostly imperatorin (Sigurdsson and colleagues, Zeitschrift für Naturforschung C 2012).

Angelica is one of the few plants the Nordic peoples cultivated in the Middle Ages. Teixidor-Toneu and colleagues trace the Old Norse name hvǫnn into every North Germanic language and into Inuit, with a Sámi name of proto-Norse origin. An Icelandic law from about 1150–1175 set a penalty for stealing angelica, and later laws in Iceland and Norway, up to the eighteenth century, protected the hvanngarðr, the angelica garden, as the farmer’s property. A late-fifteenth-century Icelandic document treats harvested angelica as church property and a way for farmers to pay the church, and Norway has some 720 place names built on kvann, the plant’s modern Norwegian name. In Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, preserved in a fourteenth-century text, the king takes an angelica stalk from a man near a church and gives it to his wife, Queen Thyra. Genetic studies show a spread from Norway to the Faroes and Iceland that fits Viking-age voyages, though the geneticists themselves credited birds. The authors add that the Greeks and Romans did not know the plant, that it is absent from classical materia medica, and that it probably reached the rest of Europe in medieval times through traveling Scandinavian monks.

For centuries the stems were a prized summer treat. Linnaeus recorded that the Sámi ate peeled stems eagerly, a seventeenth-century source called them the Sámi’s “delightful snacks and summer fruits,” and Rautio and colleagues describe Sámi harvesters tending wild stands selectively and spreading the plant to new areas (all cited by Teixidor-Toneu). The Ammassalik Inuit of east Greenland valued it highly, with children dipping stems in powdered sugar, and in the Faroe Islands it was served as a dessert with cream or thick sour milk; in Iceland and the Faroes the stems were the only sweet food available before trading posts brought sugar in the seventeenth century. Grieve adds that Icelanders ate stems and roots raw with butter, that Finns baked the stems in hot ashes, and that Norwegians made bread from the roots. Growers around Voss in western Norway selected a variety with almost solid leaf stalks and about 50% more sugar, which Kew records as the cultivar ‘Vossakvann’, and since 2014 the KVANN Norwegian Seed Savers have been reselecting it. Kew records angelica as a vegetable in Greenland and the Faroes today, but Teixidor-Toneu and colleagues note that it has largely vanished from Nordic diets, partly replaced by rhubarb.

The name comes from Christian folklore laid over older beliefs. Grieve records that across northern Europe angelica was trusted to protect against contagion and to cure “every conceivable malady,” that one legend had an angel reveal it in a dream as a cure for the plague, and that another tied it to the feast of St Michael the Archangel (May 8, old style), making it a guard against evil spirits and witchcraft; it was also called “the Root of the Holy Ghost.” Scandinavian households laid it in doorways so its strong smell would stop infections spreading, and in Iceland its fragrance was said to keep away the smell of death (Teixidor-Toneu). John Parkinson put it in the forefront of all medicinal plants in 1629, and by Grieve’s day the root was official in the Swiss, Austrian, and German pharmacopoeias. Its flavor built an industry too. Kew credits the town of Niort in western France with the art of candying the stems, and Grieve describes gin distillers using angelica with or in place of juniper, and its use in vermouth and Chartreuse. Germany’s Commission E approved the root for digestive complaints in 1990, but in 2014 EMA’s herbal committee set it aside as unlikely ever to receive a European monograph.

No one has shown how, or whether, angelica root eases indigestion in people. Its taste is aromatic at first, then sharp and bitter (Pharmakobotanik), and an Austrian Swedish bitters leaflet describes it as a bitter, oil-rich herb that stimulates the stomach and appetite and mildly relieves cramping. Pharmakobotanik notes that the essential oil had antispasmodic effects in animal experiments. ESCOP’s 2021 summary lists spasmolytic, calcium-blocking, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiviral, and cytotoxic activity in laboratory studies, and effects on the digestive tract, liver protection, inflammation, pain, sedation, anxiety, and seizures in animals. A 2021 review by Kaur and Bhatti (Phytotherapy Research) credits such effects mainly to coumarins and the volatile oil. Fraternale and colleagues found that Italian root oil inhibited Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens at 0.25% in the test tube, while affecting beneficial bifidobacteria and lactobacilli only at concentrations above 4%. None of this has been confirmed in human studies of angelica alone. For Iberogast Classic, the manufacturer describes angelica, milk thistle, and greater celandine as the three extracts that strengthen its effect on gut movement, but no human trial has separated angelica’s contribution from that of the other eight herbs.

Angelica’s furanocoumarins are the main reason for caution. EMA’s reflection paper explains that linear furanocoumarins such as xanthotoxin (8-methoxypsoralen, or 8-MOP) and bergapten (5-methoxypsoralen, or 5-MOP) become toxic when activated by ultraviolet A light, causing acute skin reactions with itching, pigmentation, and redness, which appeared at 8-MOP blood levels of about 30–50 ng/ml. The same chemistry is used on purpose in PUVA, a psoriasis treatment that combines oral 8-MOP, typically about 30 mg a dose, with UVA light, and EMA cites data showing that PUVA patients had roughly a 6- to 12-fold higher risk of squamous cell skin cancer after 8 to 10 years. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classes 8-MOP plus UV radiation as carcinogenic to humans and 5-MOP as probably carcinogenic, while evidence for angelicin is limited, and EMA adds that angular furanocoumarins such as angelicin may be less phototoxic than linear ones. Because toxicology data on angelica’s own furanocoumarin mixtures are almost entirely lacking, EMA used 8-MOP and 5-MOP as worst-case models.

To put herbal products in context, EMA compared them with food, since ordinary vegetables, fruits, and spices supply furanocoumarins every day: national assessments estimated an average intake of about 1.45 mg a day, with peaks up to 14 mg, close to the 14–15 mg at which phototoxic reactions may be expected with UV exposure. EMA proposed that up to 15 µg of total furanocoumarins a day from a herbal medicine poses no unacceptable risk; that up to 1.5 mg a day would not add significantly to overall risk but should carry a UV warning and be contraindicated in children and pregnancy; and that products above 1.5 mg need a full benefit-risk assessment. It also notes that furanocoumarins affect the cytochrome system, the liver enzymes that process many drugs. For the leaf supplement SagaPro, Kowal and colleagues (Die Pharmazie 2017) measured 158 µg per tablet of isoquercitrin, the flavonoid proposed as its active ingredient, and judged that dose highly unlikely to affect nocturia or anything else, so how the leaf extract might work remains unexplained. They also found about 280 µg of xanthotoxin per tablet, well above EMA’s no-concern level, though below its 1.5 mg threshold.

Indigestion and poor appetite are angelica root’s traditional uses. Commission E approved it in 1990 for loss of appetite and digestive discomfort such as mild spasms of the stomach and intestines, a feeling of fullness, and flatulence, and ESCOP’s 2021 monograph lists dyspeptic complaints including mild cramping, sluggish digestion, wind, fullness, and loss of appetite, as well as bronchitis. Those listings rest on tradition and laboratory work: ESCOP states that no clinical data were available for single-herb angelica root products. Europe’s current regulator has gone the other way. EMA has no monograph on angelica root, and in a 2014 statement, revised in 2015, its herbal committee listed Angelica archangelica root among herbal substances that are toxic, contain toxic constituents, or pose serious safety concerns, and for which it judged a positive benefit-risk outcome unlikely. It added that use of these substances outside the medicinal legal framework “is not recommended and should be evaluated critically.” German folk uses, including cough and bronchitis (hence the old name Brustwurz, “breast root”), menstrual complaints, and nervous sleeplessness, have never been shown to work (Pharmakobotanik).

Iberogast Classic is where most people meet medicinal angelica. Sold by Bayer, it is an alcoholic drop combining extracts of nine plants: bitter candytuft (Iberis amara), angelica root, chamomile flower, caraway fruit, milk thistle fruit, lemon balm leaf, peppermint leaf, greater celandine, and licorice root, with angelica extract making up 10 ml of every 100 ml. In Germany it is licensed for functional and motility-related stomach and bowel disorders such as functional dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and as supportive treatment for gastritis. Melzer and colleagues (Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics 2004) reanalyzed raw data from three placebo-controlled trials of STW 5 in functional dyspepsia: among 273 patients, the product beat placebo on the most bothersome symptom (odds ratio 0.22), a fourth trial found no difference from the prokinetic drug cisapride, and adverse events were similar to placebo. These results belong to the nine-herb product, not to angelica. Bayer’s newer Iberogast Advance contains six extracts and leaves out angelica, milk thistle, and greater celandine, yet it is licensed for the same functional dyspepsia and IBS uses.

Angelica root is also a common ingredient of Swedish bitters, alcoholic herbal tonics taken before or after meals, and in Austria several are registered medicines whose leaflets are published by the national medicines agency. Original Schwedenbitter Riviera combines extracts of 13 herbs, including angelica root and calamus; Gründberger Schwedenbitter lists angelica root with calamus, wormwood, myrrh, and camphor; and Apotheker Bauer’s also contains angelica root. Bauer’s leaflet describes angelica as a bitter, aromatic herb that stimulates the stomach and appetite. Gründberger’s warns that the angelica root it contains can make the skin more sensitive to light and, with UV exposure, cause skin inflammation, and that long-term use of its calamus can cause seizures or kidney damage; calamus root sits on the same EMA safety list as angelica root. As with Iberogast, any effect of these blends cannot be credited to angelica. The root and fruit also flavor bitter liqueurs and spirits, from Boonekamp, Bénédictine, and Chartreuse to gin (Pharmakobotanik), a food use rather than a medicine.

The leaf, not the root, has been tested for urinary symptoms, in two trials of SagaPro, an Icelandic food supplement made from angelica leaf. Sigurdsson and colleagues (Scandinavian Journal of Urology 2013) randomized 69 men aged 45 or older who got up at least twice a night to urinate to SagaPro or placebo for eight weeks. Night-time voids fell in the study population, with no significant difference between groups; only in a subgroup with reduced night-time bladder capacity did SagaPro look better, which the authors said warranted further study. In a 2025 pilot trial (López-Seoane and colleagues, Food Science and Nutrition), 143 adults in Spain with overactive bladder took SagaPro, 200 mg of leaf extract a day, or placebo for six weeks. The supplement group had fewer daytime voids, a better storage-symptom score, and better quality of life, while the improvement in night-time urination was not statistically significant. That trial was funded through a European Commission grant to the manufacturer and analyzed only participants who completed the protocol. Independent, larger trials are needed before angelica leaf can be called an option for bladder symptoms.

Other human data are scattered. Kudoh and colleagues (Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease Reports 2020) randomized 56 older Japanese adults with mild cognitive impairment to Feru-guard, a supplement supplying 200 mg of ferulic acid and 40 mg of angelica extract a day, or placebo. Among the 47 analyzed, scores on two cognitive tests were better with the supplement at 24 weeks, but the trial was cut short by a change in Japanese law, and angelica was the minor ingredient. Rodent studies have reported anti-anxiety and anticonvulsant effects of angelica extracts and root oil, and laboratory studies report antimicrobial and cytotoxic effects (Kaur and Bhatti), none of them tested in people. Taken together, angelica root has no clinical evidence of its own for any condition, a supporting role in one well-studied combination product, and a far longer history as food and flavoring than as a proven medicine. People looking for a digestive herb with better-studied options, or with an EU-endorsed traditional use, have several to choose from.

Commission E’s 1990 monograph gives an average daily dose of 4.5 g of the cut root, 1.5–3 g of a 1:1 fluid extract, 1.5 g of a 1:5 tincture, or equivalent preparations, taken by mouth. Pharmakobotanik describes the usual German tea: pour about 150 ml of boiling water over one teaspoon (2–4 g) of angelica root, strain after about ten minutes, and drink a cup, moderately warm, several times a day, half an hour before meals; a short decoction also works. Grieve’s older recipe used an ounce of bruised root to a pint of boiling water, taken two tablespoons at a time three or four times a day. Medicinal root should meet the European Pharmacopoeia standard and name Angelica archangelica on the label, because other Angelica species, including dong quai, are sold under similar names. None of these doses has been tested in a clinical trial, and because EMA has not endorsed any traditional use, there is no official limit on how long to take it. Short courses are the prudent choice, avoid strong sun or sunbeds while taking it, and digestive symptoms that last more than two weeks deserve a doctor’s review rather than more tea.

Commission E also listed 10–20 drops of angelica essential oil a day, but that dates from 1990, before EMA’s furanocoumarin assessment, and essential oils are concentrated enough that they should not be swallowed without professional advice. Most medicinal angelica today comes in combinations. Iberogast Classic contains 240 mg of alcohol per 20 drops, is not for children under 3, and must not be used in pregnancy, while breastfeeding, or with liver disease. Gründberger Schwedenbitter contains 40% alcohol by volume, up to 1.8 g of alcohol per 5 ml dose, and its leaflet warns that it can trigger a spasm of the larynx in babies and toddlers up to 2 years old. SagaPro was tested at 200 mg of leaf extract a day. Because strengths and plant parts vary so much, check the label for the species, the part used (root, leaf, or fruit), and the amount, and be cautious about combining several products that contain angelica or other furanocoumarin-rich herbs.

As food, angelica is permitted and familiar. US regulations list angelica, angelica root, and angelica seed among spices and natural flavorings generally recognized as safe (GRAS), and angelica root, seed, and stem among GRAS essential oils and natural extractives (21 CFR 182.10 and 182.20). Most candied angelica sold for confectionery comes from France (Kew), and Grieve gives recipes for candying the stems at home. Fresh stems can be cooked with rhubarb, and Kew notes that young flower heads are eaten in omelets or grilled. If you grow angelica, wear gloves and long sleeves when cutting or peeling stems in sunny weather and wash any sap off your skin, because the plant is phototoxic. Never gather wild angelica unless you are certain of its identity: water hemlocks grow on wet ground such as ditches and stream banks, all their parts are toxic, and tasting is not a safe test.