Sweet Woodruff

Sweet woodruff, also called sweetscented bedstraw, is a perennial of the madder family, native to much of Europe and grown for its flowers and sweet-smelling foliage. Cunningham gives it a masculine, Mars, fire character and the folk names Herb Walter, Master of the Woods, Wood Rove and Wuderove. Carried, it brings money and prosperity and victory for athletes and warriors, and in a leather sachet it guards against harm. Kynes adds Freya and Mars, Capricorn, Beltane and Walpurgis, and powers including dream work, divination, protection, purification and success. She notes it was strewn on floors in medieval Germany and put in cradles. The American Herbal Products Association records headaches linked to extracts, set out in the safety notes.