Catnip Leaf & Flower

Catnip's fame with cats has almost entirely eclipsed a much older, and in some ways more interesting, human history.

Long before it was known for driving housecats into a euphoric frenzy, catnip was a mainstay of European herbal medicine, brewed as a calming tea for restless children and sleepless adults alike. The 17th-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper described it as warming and useful for settling the stomach and easing tension, and its documented medicinal use in the British Isles goes back at least to 1735, in the General Irish Herbal. Its own name carries a small piece of that older history: Nepeta is thought to come from Nepete, the ancient name for Nepi, an Etruscan city in Italy where the plant reportedly grew in abundance.

Catnip's most surprising chapter, though, is its role as an actual daily beverage. Before tea from China became widely available and affordable in Britain, catnip tea was many households' everyday hot drink — a genuine predecessor to the cup of tea, brewed for its own gentle character long before anyone in England had tasted real Camellia sinensis.

The plant's effect on humans and cats couldn't be more different, which is part of what makes its story so strange. The same compound, nepetalactone, that sends many cats into a playful, rolling frenzy acts as a mild, calming sedative in humans — no euphoria, no psychoactive effect, just the same gentle, nerve-settling reputation that made it a household tea for centuries. One English folk belief even held that a person who chewed catnip root before a difficult conversation could read the other party's troubles more clearly — a much quieter kind of magic than the plant's modern reputation as pure feline chaos would suggest.