Blue eryngo, Eryngium planum, is the most common garden plant in the genus Erygnium. The eryngiums are a group of some 250 species native from southern Europe to Mexico and South America. They are also called sea holly.
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| Eryngium planum, blue eryngo, sea holly |
Sea holly is a sensible common name for
Eryngium maritimum, which is a plant of coastal sand dunes in Europe. It has big spine-tipped leaves that look like holly leaves. It grows--or grew, it is rare to endangered in the wild today--along the edge of the beach, so "sea holly." It is prickly and looks like a thistle but in fact is related to dill and carrots, in the plant family Apiaceae.
Blue eryngo, also often called sea holly, is Eryngium planum, a close relative with a broad native range from southern Europe into western Asia. It has long been a garden plant, with more dramatic bracts around the flower and less painfully-spiny leaves than Eryngium maritimum. It gets called sea holly but in a garden in North America, far from the native range of hollies and far from the coast, blue eryngo may be an easier name to remember.
There are also hybrids in cultivation, so you'll have to look carefully to get beyond calling the plant you see "Eryngium."
The genus name Eryngium is from the Greek name for the species of sea holly that grew in Greece, they called them eryngion. The species epithet maritimum means "of the sea." The species epithet planum means "flat': the bracts and leaves of Eryngium planum are flatter than than those of Eryngium maritimum, and probably flatter than other Eryngium species as well.
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Eryngium planum, blue eryngo, sea holly
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The striking flower heads of sea holly make it popular in bouquets and flower arrangements.
Most sea hollies sold as garden plants are blue, some intensely so, but there are also white varieties and hybrids.
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| an Eryngium hybrid |
Below you can see green shoots coming up under the part of the plant with flowers and developing seeds. The sea hollies are perennials, going dormant over the winter in cool climates (surviving some but not a lot of cold weather), growing continually in milder climates. This photo is from Victoria Island, British Columbia.
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| Eryngium planum, sea holly |
The flowers are attractive to bees, butterflies and other pollinators.
The European eryngos are minor but distinctive garden flowers which so far have not naturalized or become invasive.
Across the world, people have eaten and used sea hollies as medicines for millennia. Europeans cooked and ate the new shoots and leaves of sea holly (
E. maritima) as green vegetables. The roots were boiled or roasted, tasting a bit like chestnuts. Candied, the roots were sold as sea-side treats across England from the 1500s to at least the 1800s.
Sea holly roots (erygnoes) were reported to be aphrodesiacs. In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff, waiting in the forest for a tryst, calls upon a list of (Elizabethan) aphrodesiacs when he declares
"My doe with the black scut!
Let the sky rain potatoes,
Let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves”,
Hail kissing-comfits, and snow eryngoes;
Let there come a tempest of provocation,
I will shelter me here."
Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5, Scene 5
Europeans used the roots of Eryngium maritimum for a general tonic, for consumption (tuberculosis), jaundice, paralysis, nervous diseases, and more. Covered in thick syrup, they ate the roots to treat coughs and colds. In Ireland, the roots were given to children to expell worms. The leaves and stems, drunk in a liquid, treated "melancholy of the heart," fevers, and people whose necks are paralysed. Native Americans used American native Eryngium species--called rattlesnake master (E. aquaticum) and button eryngo (E. yuccifolium), both with white flower heads--for medicines including stomach and intestinal problems, to expell pin worms and tapeworms, and as a treatment for snakebite. Modern medical sources find eryngoes to be rich in antibiotic and antiinflamatory compounds but none of the medicinal uses have been shown to be effective, perhaps because they haven't been studied.
Eryngium species possess biologically active chemistry. The widely-planted sea hollies of Europe,
E. maritima,
E. planum,
E. campestre and hybrids are probably safe to eat in modest quantities, given their long history of being eaten in Europe and west Asia, but do not therefore assume all the world's 250
Eryngium species are safe to eat. Either nobody knows for sure what they are like or it is unwise to take medicines if you are not sick.
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| blue eryngo, Eryngium planum |
European herbal folklore linked common sea hollies to lust, love, and peace. Eat sea holly as an aphrodesiac. Include it in love charms. Use sea holly make peace between a quarrelling couple: give it to them or spread it about their home. Furthermore, sea holly protected travelers: wear or carry sea holly for luck and safety when traveling.
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| A bit happy patch of blue eryngo, Eryngium planum |
Sea hollies, eryngos, are distinctive and interesting plants.
References
Cunningham, S. 2003. Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs. expanded & revised edition. Llewellyn Publications. St. Paul, Minnesota.
Erdern, S. A., S. F. Nabavi, I. E. Orhan, M. Daglia, M. Izadi and S. M. Nabavi. 2015. Blessings in disguise: a review of phytochemical composition and antimicrobial activity of plants belonging to the genus Eryngium. DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 23: 53 (DOI 10.1186/s40199-015-0136-3,
Folger Shakespeare Library. Merry Wives of Windsor. link Accessed 2/20/26.
Grieve, M. 1971. A Modern Herbal. Originally 1931. Reprinted by Dover Publications, New York. link (holly, sea). Accessed 2/22/26.
Mac Coitir, N. 2015. Ireland's Wild Plants. The Collins Press. Cork, Ireland.
Moerman, D. E. 1999. Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press. Portland, OR. online: link
Reader's Digest. 1989. Field Guide to Wild Flowers of Britain. Reader's Digest Publishing, London.
Stearn, W. T. 1997. Stearn's Dictoionary of Plant Names for Gardeners. Cassell Publishing, Ltd. London.
I gathered posts from this blog into books for those who don't read the internet or prefer books, for example:
Kathy Keeler.
Curious Stories of Familiar Plants from Around the World available from Amazon
link and from me
Kathy Keeler
Curious Stories of Familiar Garden Plants available from Amazon
link and from me
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