Sweet Woodruff

My favorite Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) recipe gives instructions for packing dried applies into a wooden box filled with this herb in autumn, and coming back in winter to harvest the apples, which will have taken on the scent of pineapples. That scent is due to the presence of coumarin in this Galium-family herb. Sweet Woodruff has been used traditionally to flavor wine and beer, imparting into them some sedative, stomachic and blood-thinning properties. In earlier times people looked to this herb as a first aid plant, though this use is now far more commonly bestowed onto other herbs.