Acmella oleracea Seeds | Toothache Plant

Toothache Plant (Acmella oleracea) with its conical yellow-and-red button flowers and glossy green leaves — Toothache Plant (*Acmella oleracea*): Asteraceae, the buzz-button herb of South American kitchens and folk dentistry.

LATIN NAME: Acmella oleracea

COMMON NAME: Toothache Plant, Buzz Buttons

Plant Profile

Toothache Plant is a low, bushy annual of the daisy family from South America, growing thirty to fifty centimetres tall with glossy, ovate leaves and curious conical flower heads, yellow with a red-brown centre, held above the foliage through summer. It is a plant of warm, humid conditions, fast-growing and eager to flower from an early sowing.

Chew one of the flower heads and the plant announces itself: a sharp, tingling numbness spreads through the mouth, watery salivation follows, and the taste slowly fades to a sweet warmth. That sensation is the whole personality of the plant and the origin of its names.

Science & Biotechnology

The active compound is spilanthol, an alkylamide that acts on the same receptors as local anaesthetics; it has been characterised in pharmacological work and studied for analgesic and insecticidal effects, making the plant a standing subject of natural-products chemistry.

In Brazil the plant, jambu, is a recognised vegetable crop, and agronomic work has examined its cultivation and leaf chemistry; the culinary side has carried it far further than the medical one. Follow-on work has examined spilanthol’s action on sensory nerves in detail, and its dual life as a food ingredient and a topic of pharmacology keeps the plant in both literatures. Studies of its cultivation in Brazil have defined the harvest window for peak spilanthol, moving the kitchen use onto a measured footing.

Uses & Benefits

In South American cooking the leaves and flower heads are a prized vegetable: jambu is the essential green of the Amazonian soup tacacá, producing the mouth-numbing tingle the dish is known for, and the fresh buds are sold as buzz buttons or electric daisies for cocktails and tasting menus.

Folk dentistry used the flower for toothache across the tropics, a use the chemistry explains, and the plant makes a cheerful, unusual bedding annual besides. In cocktail bars the fresh buds are served whole for the numbing hit, and mixologists pair them with citrus, which sharpens the electric sensation.

Growing from Seed

Sow the fine seed on the surface of a warm, moist mix without covering it, since light aids germination, and hold the tray at twenty to twenty-five degrees.

Grow the seedlings warm and humid, pot them on early, and plant out after the last frost into rich soil in sun or light shade. Pinch the tips once for bushiness, pick flowers and leaves all summer, and pot a plant up to overwinter indoors. Feed modestly through the season; an overfed plant grows leafy and flowers late, while a lean one flowers early and long. Pick the buds every few days once flowering starts; regular picking keeps the plant producing new cones deep into autumn. Where the season is long, cut the whole plant back by half in midsummer; it regrows and sets a second, cleaner flush of cones for the autumn table.

Our Take

The plant that buzzes: a tingle on the tongue, a green for the Amazonian soup pot, and a curious button flower for a warm border.

Herb Seeds