Lemon Verbena: The South American Shrub With the Strongest Lemon Scent

Of the common lemon herbs, lemon verbena has the loudest lemon scent: sweet, sharp and perfumed, with no sourness. It’s Aloysia citrodora, a shrub native to southern Bolivia, Paraguay and northwestern Argentina, and it isn’t closely related to lemon balm, an herb it’s often confused with. The leaves are tough, so you usually get the flavor out by steeping them. They go into teas and cold drinks and flavor liqueurs, puddings and jams. Below: the compounds behind its scent and how much they vary, how to use it, and what regulators say about it.

At a glance

What lemon verbena is

Lemon verbena is a shrub of the subtropics, native to Argentina Northwest, Bolivia and Paraguay. It’s been introduced to southern Europe (Spain, France, Sardinia, Albania), parts of Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.⁴ It grows 1 to 3 meters tall.

The accepted name, Aloysia citrodora, was published by Paláu in 1784. Kew lists several other names that still turn up on labels and in older books, including Aloysia triphylla, Lippia citrodora and Verbena triphylla. They’re synonyms, not different plants. IPNI also records the spelling citriodora as a variant.⁵

Not lemon balm

People often confuse these two lemon herbs, but they aren’t closely related. Lemon verbena is in the Verbenaceae, while lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is in the mint family, Lamiaceae. See lemon balm vs. lemon verbena.

Flavor and aroma

Lemon verbena has the loudest lemon scent of the common lemon herbs: sweet, sharp and perfumed, with a light floral edge and no sourness. The leaves are tough, so you usually get the flavor out by steeping them, not by eating them. Here’s the chemistry.

The compounds, and how much they vary

In a 2023 study by Sprea and colleagues, the two forms of citral, geranial and neral, were the major compounds of the oil.¹ Citral is the same geranial and neral mix that dominates lemongrass oil. Lemon verbena’s oil is far from uniform, though. The same paper reviews earlier analyses from several countries, and they’re all over the place:

The Moroccan oils were led instead by spathulenol, ar-curcumene and caryophyllene oxide, and a sample from Jordan was led by limonene.¹ These are distilled oils from particular plants, so don’t average them into one “typical” figure. The EMA assessment also names citral as the oil’s main constituent and gives the European Pharmacopoeia minimum for the dried leaf: 3.0 ml of essential oil per kg for whole leaf, 2.0 ml/kg for fragmented leaf.²

The leaf also contains verbascoside (acteoside), with a Pharmacopoeia minimum of 2.5% in the dried leaf, along with flavonoids including luteolin derivatives.²

Origin and history

Sprea and colleagues describe lemon verbena as endemic to South America and say the Spanish and Portuguese brought it to North Africa and southern Europe in the 17th century.¹ Its formal name dates from 1784. You’ll read that the plant was named in honor of María Luisa of Parma, and that it traveled through Paris and Oxford to Victorian Britain and North America. We couldn’t trace those stories to a source we could open, so they’re left out.

How lemon verbena is used

Fresh or dried leaves often go into refreshing drinks and flavor liqueurs, puddings and jams, and the plant and its oil are used by the cosmetic and food industries. Spanish food law allows the leaves to be sold as infusions, according to the EMA assessment.²

The easiest uses are infusions. Steep the leaves in hot water for tea, in warm cream or milk for custard and ice cream, or in sugar syrup for drinks and sorbets, then strain them out. A few leaves in the cavity of a roasting chicken or in a fish parcel add perfume without much leaf to chew.

Buying and quality

Fresh sprigs should smell strongly of lemon when you crush a leaf. For dried leaf, the pharmacopoeia oil minimum above is the only formal quality benchmark we found.² If dried lemon verbena smells faint or dusty, it’s lost a lot of what you’re paying for.

Storage

We couldn’t find a published shelf-life figure for fresh or dried lemon verbena from a regulator or extension service. Smell is the practical test: crush a leaf, and if the lemon scent is weak, it’s faded.

Health and safety

What the EU regulator says about medicinal use. The EMA’s herbal committee accepts lemon verbena leaf as a traditional herbal medicine for relief of mild symptoms of mental stress and to aid sleep, and for mild digestive complaints including bloating and flatulence. Its monograph says that rests entirely on long-standing use.⁶ The assessment found only one published clinical study on the leaf, and concluded the data don’t meet the bar for well-established medicinal use.² Sprea and colleagues note folk use for stomach complaints, insomnia and anxiety, which is tradition, not evidence that it works.¹

Cautions in the EMA monograph.⁶

• Use in children isn’t recommended, for lack of adequate data.
• Use in pregnancy and breastfeeding isn’t recommended, for lack of data.
• People allergic to verbena-family plants should avoid it.
• No side effects are known.

Food use. Lemon verbena isn’t on the FDA GRAS lists for spices or essential oils that cover lemon balm and peppermint. Instead it appears in 21 CFR 172.510 as “Lemon-verbena, Lippia citriodora”, with a ditto mark in the limitations column carried down from an earlier entry. The nearest stated limitation above it is “In alcoholic beverages only”.³ In the EU, herbal infusions of lemon verbena are capped at 400 µg/kg of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, plant toxins that can contaminate harvests.⁷

We don’t claim lemon verbena treats or prevents anything. Claims that it fights inflammation or arthritis, prevents cancer, or matches green tea in antioxidants couldn’t be traced to a source that supports them.

Substitutes and comparisons

Lemon balm is the gentler lemon herb, and lemongrass the grassier one. Lemon zest covers the citrus but not the perfume. See lemon verbena substitutes.

• Lemon verbena vs. lemongrass
• Lemon balm vs. lemon verbena
• Profiles: lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon thyme, lemon myrtle