Botanical atlas

Alpine Hawkweed

Hieracium alpinum

Alpine hawkweed belongs to a genus so tangled with lookalike microspecies that even careful old herbalists tended to pass it by in favor of its lowland cousin, mouse-ear hawkweed, which carried the real weight of hawkweed folk medicine for coughs and water retention. What survives about Hieracium alpinum itself is mostly botanical rather than medicinal, the record of a small, tough, single-flowered daisy that mountain travelers and alpine plant collectors noted for its ability to root into bare scree where almost nothing else would grow. Its true legacy lives in gardens and herbaria more than in the medicine chest. Because solid historical evidence for its internal or topical use is thin, this entry leans on what can be said with confidence rather than borrowing claims that belong to its better-documented relatives.

Safety.

Alpine hawkweed has no documented toxicity and no significant history of medicinal or culinary use.