PlantFiles: Root Beer Plant, Hoja Santa, Mexican Pepperleaf
Piper auritum

I received this plant from a DG friend in Dallas. Other than a brief description and average height, I didn't know much about the plant. I planted it in the ground next to the green house. It seems to approve of the location and kept going through the winter. It's height of 10 feet started to concern me thinking that it might be a tree, so I went to the Plant Files and comments which put my worries to rest. It is much larger than I was expecting.

I have had this in the same pot for about 13yrs. It dies back in cold weather, but always comes back. It also withers when thirsty, but pops right back up after watering. Mine gets morning sun and afternoon shade. I keep the pot on concrete to keep it from creeping from it's container.

I have used it to wrap chicken breasts for baking, and my husband has used it in poached fish ~ gives a very subtle flavor.

Leaves are very tasty. You'd have to eat an awful lot of them to have any negative affect. Leaves used in cooking in Mexico and farther south. Put on tamale masa before enclosing tamale in corn husk, add to a green sauce, other things. Adds a slightly licorice taste.

A year ago, I acquired a tiny plant from my father's NW Florida home. While he very much enjoyed them, they did freeze back each year. Well, I do not recommend them for SW Florida. This creature has become 10 feet tall with runners popping up everywhere. It's a lovely plant but needs to be container grown in the South. Never let it loose!

I have a back yard that has a lot of marl; somehow this plant got in among an elephant-ear growth, and is staging a full-scale invasion! It may have started in shade, but it's growing all over in the full-sun areas. I think I really am going to need to plow and re-sod to get it under control. The roots only get stronger if the stuff's mowed over or cut down. Anybody have a mule to loan?

My Piper auritum grows in fairly deep shade under a large old Live Oak tree in my garden in NE Florida (Zone 8b/9a, winter temperatures typically down to about 28 F on a few nights). It dies back about halfway down the stem in freezing weather, but returns vigorously in the spring. It does take a lot of room -- my plant is about 6 ft high and just as wide, competing with large Alocasia elephant ears and several other shade plants for limited space.

The very distinctive root beer aroma of the leaves is always a conversation item when providing garden tours for friends. I am surprised to learn from the comments above the extensive culinary uses of Piper auritum, but then it is a close relative of black pepper (Piper nigrum) so it makes sense that it would be edible.

I noticed recently that my P. auritum has sent out its first sucker offspring about 3 ft from the parent plant. I will start digging these up and potting them up as they are produced to provide to other gardeners.

The flowers, which are typically vertically straight up, about 6 inches long, and a bright white are very elegant against the green leaves.

Jeremy

This plant in my experience is Extremly
I dug out the mama plant when suckers started popping out oof my 90% sand yard as far as 8 feet away from it's mama.
I still have a good 20 pups popping up.
When I give it away I advise keeping it above ground in a container.
I have only had it 2 years and I am aggresively trying to control it.

This grows wonderfully in my backyard in foggy San Francisco - I use the leaves to wrap tamales (inside the corn husk) and make different Oaxacan moles. It can also flavor pozole and steamed veggies among other culinary uses.

It is, however, a bit invasive here...throwing up shoots several feet from the main plant, and very much more so in tropical areas. I put an ad on Craigslist to give away the overabundant leaves since it's impossible to find in our Latino grocery stores here. Several people have come by to get free leaves for their cooking.

I live in Oaxaca and Hoja Santa or Herba Santa as it is more commonly known here, is used widely in cooking. A favorite is an egg cooked on a griddle (or comal) on top of the large leaf. Or even better a tortilla with grilled Herba Santa, black beans, and a little fresh cheese. It does not seem terribly aggresive. Easy to handle the growth. It's really a pretty plant - try it!

I love this plant. Like rubbing a leaf between my fingers to get that root beer scent. It is prolific, but seedlings are easy to remove. Mine is close to 2 years old, planted inground, full sun. Did not die back due to mild winter. As of this writing, it is about 2 ft tall, but looking forward to it getting 4-5 tall, to provide a little bit of shade to plants underneath.

I'm in Indiana, so this plant is being grown in a greenhouse. It's doing well (apart from my crappy green thumb), and is growing in leaps and bounds.

Anyhew, for those that are worried about the carcinogenicity... don't be! The small amounts of safrole in this plant that's bad for rat livers, when force fed mass quantities of the substance, is just as "bad" as that found in black pepper (piperonal). So go ahead, cook with it, have a wonderful time with it... Like everything in life, just don't do it every day!!

Both my sister in law and I bought this plant two years ago in 6" pots. She planted hers in her back yard and it is now 7' tall and has spread to about 15' across. She has been mowing it else it would have spread further. I kept mine in a pot and it has grown well. I transplanted it to a two gallon pot about 5 months ago and it put on an amazing growth spurt to the point where it looks like it could already use a larger pot. Next year maybe. It is now about four feet tall. One thing, it really needs alot of water

ed

I planted a 1g plant last fall and in a year it has grown to 6' tall and easily as wide. It has also produced 4 new plants which have sprouted up as far as 3' away from the mother plant (apparently the result of some digging I did earlier for summer plantings).
Here in Santa Barbara, I have it planted where it gets sun all morning, but is protected from the hottest afternoon sun. I feed it every 6-8 weeks with an organic fertilizer for tropicals which has kept it lush and blooming from late spring until now (mid Nov.) with no signs yet of it stopping. It does like to stay on the moist side, but is easy enogh to achieve with my drip system.
It has become one of my favorite and certainly most unusual plants in the garden. I'll get a picture of it up as soon as possible.

It grows well almost everywhere, from hot wet tropical places to the cloud forests of Mexico and South America, It grew well in Riverside, California under full sun, wilting a little during the hottest hours, but recovering by evening. It has been reported in Hawaii and now is growing well in the north of France in a pot, but I put it inside at this time of the year.
It can become a little bit invasive in some places, if you have the right kind of soil and weather you will end up with many plants in your garden. I think it can reproduce asexually and sends new growths all around the place, it can be hard to pull them by hand and the roots (or underground shoots) can go very deep.
Propagates easily by cuttings.
In México is known as acuyo, hoja santa, hierba santa or tlanepa, it is used in cooking mostly in the center-south of the country.
The leaves are added to corn husk tamales in some places, but especially to banana leave tamales: you put a clean, dry piece of P.auritum (without the central vein) on the corn husk or banana leave then you add the masa mixture and then the sauce and meat. Put another piece of acuyo on the top of it before you wrap the tamale.
In the famous fish in acuyo, a whole fish or filet is wrapped in the large leaves and then grilled or baked.
The sauce for mole verde (green mole) has acuyo, epazote, cilantro, tomatillo, jalapeños or serranos, everything stir-fried (this keeps the green color of the herbs) and then blended with a piece of onion a garlic clove and some cumin, to make it soupy add this mixture to some chicken or beef broth and you can add chicken, pork and beef meat together or one of two of them, as well as green beans, faba beans, pieces of sweet white corn, and zucchini. To make the thick version add some peeled, roasted pumpkin seeds to the mixture before blending add less broth and the meat of your preference and some cut green beans if you wish.

I have not grown this myself because I've had difficulty locating it; also, I live in the high desert of Texas (5000 ft.) so keeping the ground moist might be a difficulty. There is a restaurant in San Antonio (Liberty Bar) that serves a delicious chicken breast entree that is wrapped in hoya santa leaf. It looks to me as if they grill the chicken breast, then wrap it in the leaf and put it back on the grill for a few minutes before serving. It's not something you might like to have every day, but a special treat now and then shouldn't be toxic.

I have grown this plant in two different areas of Texas. One in zone 8 and the other here, in zone 9, and it has remained green all winter in both places. Both ares were moist. It does become invasive though, spreading from the root system. The aroma that it gives off is worth the work of keeping in control.

I have not grown this plant but intend to try it. I want it because it is a common ingredient in the posole verde (a stew of meat-often chicken-and hominy) made in the state of Guerrero, in Mexico. I am mostly interested in growing things to use in cooking. From what I have read here, I think it will have to live in a large pot.

This plant sounds very interesting for container culture. It is not listed on the 2003 Florida Exotic Pest Plant List, so it may not be as invasive as some have written.

I released this plant in a moist spot that got some shade from a mulberry. It's odor is a delight, and its location kept it fairly well contained so it was not a problem most of the time. However, I have moved to a much more moist part of Hillsborough County Florida, so I am hesitant to plant it here, should I find any again. I remember finding underground runners many feet from the plant!

But the smell...

In "Cornucopia; A Source Book of Edible Plants", the entry for Piper auritum says it is used in many dishes in South America and that it is recommended for aquaculture applications. This book is very good for noting when a plant contains a possible toxin, and specifies when you double-boil leaves and that sort of thing. These plants are probably safe to use in cooking. When in doubt, find a native and ask! :-)

This is an amazing plant, especially when allowed to grow in clusters. Its fragrance is unique and wonderful. Its tall stems (ours have grown to about 9 ft.) provide a lot of shade underneath as well as a large-leafed backdrop to other, shorter plants out front. We live in Arlington, Texas and our soil is iron-rich and sandy. As far as we can tell, the hoja propogates by sending out underground roots, similar to bamboo, but not as invasive or as crowded. It transplants well. They need partial shade/dappled sun to grow here in the Texas heat, and it takes a couple of years for them to get established. Mulch well, and they will return the following year. This year we've had the pleasure of some variegated leaves, though how that happened, we don't know. We first saw these plants in Fredericksburg, Texas at an herb farm, in large clusters. Since then, we have also seen them along the San Antonio riverwalk. They look good in pots,too-big pots. We've heard you can cook with the leaves, but have not heard specifically how to do this. We are obviously smitten.

I bought a baby plant for a dollar this Spring and it is now about 18 inches tall. The seller told me it was invasive here in Northcentral Florida, zone 8b, and needs almost full shade. She also said it was edible, so I did some research and found this tender perennial is a rainforest plant of Southern Mexico and Central America, growing up to 18 feet tall near stream banks. People there use it for food and medicine, making a supposedly very good tasting tea and wrapping fish or pork in the large leaves like tamales. However, there is some concerns it may be carcinogenic, so I think I will just admire mine ornamentally.

I've found that it truly does not like much sun, so it is still in a pot while I ponder where to plant it, as I have a lot of deciduous trees, and my forest floor becomes much sunnier in the winter. Also I have to consider its possible invasive quality, so it has to be planted somewhere invasiveness won't be a problem, like near a driveway that's mowed a couple of times a year. Also I really like it's bold, tropical effect and may put it behind some of my brugmansias. So, due to my indecisiveness, the plant will probably be potted up into a larger pot to spend the winter, and next spring finally go into its carefully chosen spot so it will have a full warm season to establish itself in the ground.

Propagation: Seed, possibly spread by birds and bats; suckers profusely.

Piper auritum has giant, rounded leaves to about a foot across, light green, and smell just like root beer.

Plants grow 4 to 6 feet tall, and spread to 4 feet. Narrow white 6" spikes of tiny flowers appear in late summer and fall. It forms colonies by underground runners. Bold and beautiful specimen for a shady, moist site. Native to Mexico, it's hardy in zones 8-11.