There is a profound magic in the way plants mirror their seasons. Every year at the Summer Solstice, I look for the bright, cheerful bursts of St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) opening up along the wild edges of my garden and the sunny meadows and roadsides.
Ancient herbalists saw its sun-shaped blossoms and its ability to bring “light into the darkness” as a clear signature for its use in lifting the spirit.
I believe there is no plant that holds the fiery, radiant energy of the summer sun quite like this one. It remains one of my absolute favorite, most treasured herbal allies for the nervous system, deep tissue repair, and emotional vitality.
Plant Profile Summary
Common Name: St. John’s wort
Botanical Name: Hypericum perforatum
Family: Hypericaceae
Habitat: While native to Europe, it has naturalized across North America, and unfortunately is aggressively invasive in the Western US. When I’m foraging, I always find it thriving in wild, open meadows, along sunny roadsides, and in disturbed soils. Note: Don’t harvest from roadsides or industrial/agricultural waste places due to heavy metals in the soil!
Appearance: This is a perennial herb that grows up to 3 feet tall with lovely five-petaled, bright yellow flowers. One of my favorite tricks to show my students: if you hold a leaf up to the light, it looks heavily perforated with tiny pinholes (hence the name perforatum). These are actually translucent oil glands holding the plant’s medicine!
The Personality and Energetics of St John’s Wort
St. John’s wort is the ultimate solar herb. I think of it for the person who feels like they have “lost their inner sunshine,” often during prolonged periods of stress, trauma, or grief. The perfect person for St. John’s Wort may experience a heavy, dark, cool, or isolating type of depression where they feel fundamentally stuck in the shadows or unable to motivate to get back into the sun.
The plant’s personality is like a steady, consistent friend who opens the curtains, takes your hand, and leads you back out into the sunshine.
Physically, this “cold and stagnant” state may also show up as sluggish digestion, cold extremities, and deep somatic tension, especially tension held right in the center of the body at the solar plexus. That is why St. John’s wort’s steady, radiating warmth is capable of moving that stuck energy so effectively: it’s not too strong, it doesn’t over-stimulate anything. Instead, it acts as a trophorestorative (“tissue healer”), meaning it deeply nourishes, and restores frayed, exhausted nervous system function over time. It helps “thaw out” the nervous system, so that the body can relax, process emotion, and feel warm again.
Virtues of St John’s Wort
1. Lifting Heavy Moods
When taken internally, St. John’s wort is a profound remedy for depression, anxiety, and deep nervous tension. It is famous for its helpfulness during the dark winter months to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It truly acts as a “light bringer,” moving stagnant, heavy energy and helping the body rediscover its inner sunshine. It’s not just for SAD, though: St. John’s Wort can bring the light back in all kinds of heavy, cold, stagnant depression, from postpartum depression to chronic depression to grief or whatever else ails you!
2. Healing Nerve Pain and Skin Traumas
I think the biggest misconception about St. John’s Wort is that it is only an “herbal antidepressant.” While it is incredibly effective for mood support, pigeonholing it there ignores its profound healing properties! It is a master wound healer and one of our finest remedies topically for burns. Topically and internally it is fantastic for nerve pain, including neuropathic pain from shingles, injuries, sciatica, diabetes, and other causes.
3. Promoting Restful Sleep
Because St. John’s Wort helps the body raise its concentration of melatonin, it can help with sleep cycle dysregulation, although it isn’t really a sedative. As well as helping balance the sleep-wake cycle (so you can sleep at night), it can be especially helpful for people who feel like their nervous systems are worn out or overtaxed (again, nervine trophorestorative) or who suffer from night terrors (as I said, it’s helpful for anxiety and stress), so you can slip into a deep, restorative sleep.
How to Take St. John’s Wort
Take St. John’s Wort daily for best effect. It should be taken internally as a tincture, or applied externally as a liniment (topical tincture), oil, or salve. Teas and other water extractions are not effective.
Contraindications: Who Should NOT Take St. John’s Wort
As much as I love this plant, we have to respect its power. St. John’s Wort stimulates the CYP3A4 enzyme pathway in the liver. This is the pathway your body uses to clear many pharmaceutical drugs. Because of this, it can clear medications out of your system too fast and render them ineffective.
Please do not take St. John’s Wort internally if you are on:
- Pharmaceutical antidepressants (especially SSRIs)
- Blood thinners
- Heart medications
- Multiple serotonin drugs
- Other medications that sustain life or would have severe consequences if your blood levels dropped
If you want to dive deeper into exactly how herbs and medications interact, please read my full guide on Herbal Contraindications and Interactions.
Growing St. John’s Wort
If you want to invite this sunshine into your own garden, you are in luck… it is wonderfully forgiving!
It grows best in full sun in Zones 4–9, and happily tolerates poor, dry soil. When it’s happy it will become a weed in the garden, which is fine here in Vermont as it’s well-behaved, but if you live in an area where it’s an aggressive invasive (Western North America) DO NOT grow this plant!
It’s very easy to wildcraft as it’s abundant or invasive in most of its range. Just be sure the soil is clean–no roadsides, no train tracks, no old dairy barns or factories!
If you are feeling inspired to grow these resilient plants entirely from scratch this year, I have a complete guide to help you along. You can visit my article on Starting Medicinal Plants from Seed for all my best tips on coaxing wild medicine right out of the soil!
Harvesting St. John’s Wort
Clip the flowering tops (mostly flowers, some leaves and stems) when the flowers are a mix of buds, blooms, and starting to form seeds. I always harvest on a sunny day during the full moon closest to the summer solstice for maximum sun energy!
Making Medicine with St John’s Wort
St. John’s Wort is highly alcohol soluble and is much better fresh, so the best way to make medicine is a fresh weight-to-volume tincture. It also makes a wonderful infused oil that can become a salve or stay as a massage oil!
I prefer to use the weight-to-volume method rather than a folkloric “fill a jar” method. This gives us a really consistent, predictable dose. For fresh St John’s Wort, , the magic ratio is 1:2 at 95% alcohol.
This means for every 1 ounce of freshly chopped aerial parts (weighed on a scale), I use 2 fluid ounces of liquid (measured in a measuring cup). Because we’re using 95% alcohol, this is one of those easy times where we can use straight grain alcohol out of the bottle instead of diluting with water! For example: If I harvest 4 ounces of fresh St John’s Wort, I will need 8 total ounces of liquid. To get 95%, I don’t need to mix in any water at all, so it’s just 8 ounces of grain alcohol. .
I pour the liquid over the fresh herbs in a glass jar, mash it all down with a spoon or cocktail muddler until the plant material is completely submerged, line the lid with a little waxed paper, and label. I let it sit in a cool, dark place for 6 weeks, shaking it regularly, before pressing it out with a potato ricer. It makes the sunniest medicine for the darkest days!
A Final Note
Bringing St. John’s Wort into your apothecary is like capturing a little bit of the summer sun to keep you warm and resilient all year long. I hope this profile inspires you to safely welcome its medicine into your home.
Happy foraging and medicine making!