St John's wort, the midsummer flower

Herbalist Sajah Popham's Sun-ruled herb of the spirit, for low mood, the liver and nerve pain — checked against the depression trials, the drug interactions and the one trial for nerve pain.

15 October 2026 8 min read ▶ 10-min video 7 sources · 6 peer-reviewed

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Chart of St John's wort's chance of response against placebo and against antidepressants in the Cochrane review

In brief

Sajah Popham's herb of the Sun's spirit is St John's wort, the yellow flower that blooms around St John's Day at midsummer. For depression the evidence is strong: in 29 trials of 5,489 people it beat placebo and matched standard antidepressants, with fewer people stopping for side effects. He is right that it works on the liver — it speeds up how the gut and liver clear many medicines, from the contraceptive pill to transplant drugs — and that makes it one of the most interaction-prone herbs there is. For nerve pain, its one trial found no effect.

29 trials, 5,489 people with depression: St John's wort beat placebo and matched standard antidepressants

1.28× the chance of responding compared with placebo, in the larger, more reliable trials 1.87× in the smaller ones.

¼ as many people stopped for side effects as on older antidepressants; half as many as on SSRIs

5 groups of medicines it can weaken: the pill, ciclosporin and tacrolimus, warfarin, digoxin and HIV protease inhibitors

Learn from the source

Sajah Popham

Herbalist and host of The Plant Path; founder of the School of Evolutionary Herbalism.

He teaches herbal medicine through the energetics of plants and people, and herbal astrology alongside it.

evolutionaryherbalism.com ↗ Every summary of Sajah Popham’s work →

The midsummer flower

The spirit of the Sun

Sajah Popham's fourth Sun herb, for the spirit — the mind and emotions, in the alchemical sense — is St John's wort, Hypericum perforatum. Its little yellow flowers, “rays of sunshine”, open around St John's Day, 24 June, just after the northern summer solstice, when the Sun's force is at its peak; he sees the herb gathering that force and lifting it into the heart and mind. The name does come from the feast, and it flowers from about June to September in the north. Its species name refers to the leaf's “perforations” — translucent oil glands you can see against the light.

For members

Read the whole summary

5 sections, 3 diagrams, the video with its chapters, 9 claims checked against the research, 7 sources with the names of the people who did the work and links to it — and downloads in PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

🔒 St John's wort and depression
🔒 A liver remedy — and a clash with medicines
🔒 Nerve pain and wounds
🔒 St John's wort in the sky

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St John's wort, the midsummer flower

In brief

Learn from the source

The spirit of the Sun

Read the whole summary

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