Plants

Solomons Seal

Roots

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Solomons Seal." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/plants/solomons-seal.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Solomons Seal. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/plants/solomons-seal

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-solomons-seal,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Solomons Seal},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/plants/solomons-seal},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Solomons Seal, a root, is ruled by Saturn in Culpeper's herbalism, cold, drying, and grounding, a herb of bone, structure, and age. When its thick white root is cut across, the scar shows a mark like a six-pointed seal, whence its name and the tale that Solomon himself set his sign upon it in token of its virtue. Culpeper esteemed the root a sovereign sealer and knitter of broken bones and a healer of bruises: a poultice of it takes away the black and blue of a blow, whence its old country name, and it was laid on wounds, sprains, and broken flesh to close and mend them. Its sealing mark and bone-mending power make it a herb of Saturn, grounding, binding, and consolidating the body's frame.

Facts

Debunked

Origin Period

1653 5Culpeper, The Complete Herbal

Agnes Arber's Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670 (Cambridge University Press, 1938) surveys the printed herbals of that two-century period and documents how the doctrine of signatures, that a plant's form, colour or habit declares its medicinal use, a yellow flower for the Sun, a perforated leaf for light, a plant of wet ground for the Moon, was applied inconsistently from one compiler to the next. Comparing planetary and use attributions for the same plants across different herbals, Arber finds no agreement between authors, direct evidence the method is a theory of resemblance rather than one of observation or testing. Where a signature plant does have a real effect, as St John's Wort, willow and the poppy do, Arber traces that activity to the plant's chemistry, unconnected to its appearance. The instability she documents between compilers is why this atlas gives no single planetary attribution as settled.

Origins

Botanical Identification

Polygonatum multiflorum, family Asparagaceae, formerly placed in Liliaceae 3

Origin of the Name

When the thick white root is cut across, the scar shows a mark like a six-pointed seal, whence the plant's name and the old tale that Solomon himself set his sign upon it as a token of its virtue. 4

Origin Region

Europe and temperate Asia 3

Meaning

Themes

Protection and exorcism 2Cunningham

Attributions

Ruling Planet

Saturn 1Culpeper

Temperament

Cold, drying, and grounding, a herb of bone, structure, and age 1

Traditional Ailments

Root used to knit broken bones and heal bruises 1

Correspondences

Element Correspondence

Water 2Cunningham

Learn More

The Root with the Sealing Mark

Solomon's seal, Polygonatum, is a woodland perennial with arching stems, paired oval leaves and small greenish-white bell-flowers hung beneath. Its name comes from its thick horizontal rootstock, which is scarred where each year's stem has died away, leaving round depressions that were likened to the impressions of a seal, and, by legend, to the seal of King Solomon, the ring with which he was said to command spirits and to know the virtues of plants. Its old domestic use to close wounds and fade bruises is noted here as folk history.

A related East Asian species, Polygonatum sibiricum and its kin, is used in traditional Chinese medicine under the name huang jing, valued there as a tonic root quite independently of the European sealing-legend that shaped the plant's Western reputation, the two traditions reaching for the same woodland genus by entirely separate routes. The scars on the rootstock are in fact the true botanical origin of the plant's common name, left where the previous year's stem broke away, so that counting the scars gives a rough count of the plant's age, a method still used informally by foragers and gardeners today to judge how long a clump has been established.

A Herb of Saturn, and of Sealing and Binding

Culpeper placed Solomon's seal under Saturn and repeated the tradition that the sealing marks on the root revealed, by the doctrine of signatures, its power to seal up and close wounds. That same seal-lore gave the plant a place in protective and binding magic: the root was used in charms to seal a working, to bind and to guard, borrowing the authority of Solomon's ring over the spirit world. Its whole symbolism, sealing, closing, binding, protection, wisdom, grows from the single vivid image of the seal-scarred root and the great king whose name it bears, a plain botanical feature drawing to itself one of the richest names in magical tradition.

A plain caution belongs alongside the old wound-lore: the plant's blue-black autumn berries are mildly toxic if eaten, capable of causing vomiting and digestive upset, so the same woodland plant valued for closing wounds on the skin is not to be eaten itself, a distinction worth stating plainly. In the modern garden Solomon's seal remains valued simply for its quiet elegance, arching stems and hanging bells suited to shade, so that a plant once carrying the authority of a legendary king's ring now serves mostly as an unassuming, well-behaved border perennial.

Cross-Tradition Connections