Lemongrass: The Fever Grass

Ancient Lore, Sacred Ritual & Modern Science

The Grass That Smells Like Weather

There is a moment that anyone who has ever crushed a lemongrass stalk between their fingers knows intimately — the sudden release of fragrance, sharp and bright and green, that fills the air with something between a lemon grove and a tropical rainstorm, something so clean and immediate that it seems to clear the mind simply by entering the nose. This fragrance, this biochemical announcement, is the plant saying something before a single word has been translated. It is saying: I am alive, I am useful, and I have been here for a very long time.

Cymbopogon citratus — lemongrass — is not a glamorous plant. It does not produce flowers that poets have written about or fruits that legends have sanctified. It is a tall, unassuming grass, growing in dense clumps in the warm, humid margins of the tropical world — the edges of fields, the boundaries of kitchen gardens, the fences of village compounds. It has no single legendary origin story, no moment of divine discovery. What it has instead is something more durable: a record of usefulness so wide and so consistent, across so many cultures and centuries and conditions, that its presence in nearly every traditional medicine system on earth begins to feel less like coincidence and more like convergence — different eyes, in different places, seeing the same true thing.

Lemongrass has a long history of use dating back thousands of years in traditional medicine, culinary practices, and cultural rituals across Asia, Africa, and South America. Originating in tropical and subtropical regions, particularly India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, lemongrass has been cultivated and valued for its aromatic, medicinal, and culinary properties for centuries.

A Name for Every Climate It Reached

The names lemongrass has accumulated across its global journey are a geographic and cultural record of everywhere it has been useful. In Thailand it is takhrai (ตะไคร้). In Indonesia and Malaysia it is sereh. In the Philippines it is tanglad. In China it is xiāng máo (香茅) — fragrant grass. In India it is known variously across languages, but its Ayurvedic identity — used for millennia in a medical tradition that classifies plants by their energetic quality, their taste, and their relationship to the three doshas — places it firmly as a warming, pungent herb that stimulates digestion and clears heat.

It's now used as a tea to boost immunity in the Caribbean and to ease anxiety in Brazilian folk medicine. In Hoodoo, it's the primary ingredient in van van oil and is used to clear energy and bring the wearer good luck.

In the Caribbean, throughout the islands of the West Indies, it is simply fever grass — a name as direct and pharmacologically honest as any in this article's long series of plant names. The fever grass treats fevers. It always has. In regions like the Caribbean, it earned its nickname for helping reduce fevers and illnesses.

One species of lemongrass, Cymbopogon schoenanthus, was used by nomads in the Sahara to make phytotherapeutic infusions. They called it "Straw of Mecca." Another species, Cymbopogon giganteus, was also used as an infusion to control yellow fever.

Across West Africa, East Africa, and the Sahel, different species of Cymbopogon have been central to folk medicine for centuries — treating malaria, digestive disorders, hypertension, and infections that, in climates without reliable pharmaceutical access, could mean the difference between life and death.

Origin and the Straw of Mecca

Multiple species of lemongrass are native to various Southeast Asian countries, with Malaysia being considered the specific point of origin for Cymbopogon citratus. The first record of cultivation dates back to 17th-century texts from the Philippines.

But the genus Cymbopogon itself — the broader group to which all lemongrasses belong — has a longer history in the ancient world than this suggests. Although not used in cuisine in Rome or Greece, lemongrass essential oil was used in cosmetics and perfumery. It is therefore not inappropriate to consider Cymbopogon as a possible ingredient in the Holy Anointing Oil. Many ancient Greek and Roman texts reference an Indian grass with aromatic properties. Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis Historia, mentions an ointment made of fresh olive oil, cyperus, calamus, and other aromatic ingredients. The comic poet Menander called a similar aromatic Indian product the most fashionable perfume of his time.

The possibility that lemongrass entered Mediterranean perfumery and ritual oil practice — including the sacred oils of ancient Hebrew tradition — places it in a historical context that predates its documented medical use by centuries. Long before anyone wrote down what it did to a fever, people were using it for how it smelled, and for what that smell seemed to do to the mind and spirit.

Ayurveda and TCM: The Grass as System Medicine

In ancient India and China, lemongrass was widely used in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine to treat digestive issues, fever, infections, and inflammation. It was also believed to have detoxifying and calming effects, often brewed into teas or applied as an herbal remedy.

In Ayurveda — the medical system of ancient India that classifies all substances by their taste (rasa), their post-digestive effect (vipaka), and their energetic quality (virya) — lemongrass is understood as a plant with pungent, bitter taste and warming energy that acts primarily on the digestive and respiratory systems. Ayurveda makes use of this ancient herb in treating weak digestion, poor circulation, poor concentration, fever, varicose veins, intestinal infections, and certain infectious skin problems.

In traditional medicine of India, the leaves of the plant are used as a stimulant, sudorific, antiperiodic, and anticatarrhal, while the essential oil is used as carminative, depressant, analgesic, antipyretic, antibacterial, and antifungal agent.

The term sudorific — meaning that it promotes sweating — is central to understanding the traditional fever treatment. A plant that induces perspiration helps the body's own temperature-regulation mechanism work more effectively, assisting the fever's purpose (killing pathogens through heat) while reducing the discomfort and danger of prolonged high temperature. This is pharmacologically sound. The fact that traditional medicine systems arrived at this understanding through empirical observation rather than biochemical analysis does not make the observation less accurate.

The traditional Chinese medicine used lemongrass for treating headache, rheumatism, abdominal pain, and cold. This herb was also a part of Brazilian folklore medicine for calming the mind, treating muscular spasms, cramps, and fatigue.

Ritual and the Sacred Grass

If the pharmacological uses of lemongrass are remarkable in their global consistency, the ritual uses are equally striking in their emotional intelligence. Across every culture that encountered this plant, its fragrance was understood as more than pleasant — it was understood as operative, as doing something to the space it entered and to the minds of the people in that space.

In folklore, lemongrass held spiritual significance beyond its healing properties. Thai villages planted it around homes to ward off negative energy and unwanted insects. The plant's fresh scent was believed to purify spaces and promote mental clarity. Village elders burned dried lemongrass during ceremonies to invite prosperity and protection. Some cultures viewed it as a bridge between worlds, using it in meditation practices to enhance focus. Indonesian shamans incorporated it into ritual smudging, believing the smoke carried prayers to ancestral spirits.

In Hoodoo, it's the primary ingredient in van van oil and is used to clear energy and bring the wearer good luck. Van van oil — one of the most widely used ritual oils in the African American folk magic tradition of Hoodoo — is a preparation that exists at the intersection of West African botanical knowledge, Creole culture, and the particular alchemy of the American South. That lemongrass is its primary ingredient speaks to how persistently this plant is associated, across traditions with no shared history, with the same qualities: clarity, protection, the sweeping away of what is stuck and stale.

In the Amazon, bundles of lemongrass were used to protect homes and spirits with its sharp scent. Traditional Southeast Asian folklore revered it for its protective qualities, using it to ward off misfortune and to invite positive energy into a space. Alongside its protective prowess, lemongrass was often used in rituals to provide clarity and enhance spiritual communication. In some beliefs, burning lemongrass would help with psychic abilities, offering a bridge to higher wisdom.

There is a pharmacological reality behind these ritual uses that was not available to the people who developed them, but that validates what they observed. Citral — the dominant compound in lemongrass essential oil, responsible for its characteristic lemon fragrance — has been shown to interact with the GABA system in the brain. GABA is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, the brain's main mechanism for reducing neural excitement, anxiety, and the feeling of mental static. The ritual use of lemongrass to clear the mind and promote clarity was, in effect, a practice of GABAergic pharmacology administered through the nose — an aromatherapy with a biochemical mechanism.

The Chemistry: Citral and Its Companions

Lemon grass oil contains 65 to 85 percent citral in addition to myrcene, citronellal, citronellol, linalool, and geraniol.

Citral is itself a mixture of two isomers — geranial and neral — and is one of the most widely used aroma compounds in the fragrance industry. But it is far more than a scent molecule. Lemongrass contains antioxidants, flavonoids, and phenolic compounds such as luteolin, glycosides, quercetin, kaempferol, elemicin, catechol, chlorogenic acid, and caffeic acid. The main component of this fragrant herb is lemonal or citral, which has antifungal and antimicrobial qualities.

Lemongrass is a source of essential vitamins and minerals including vitamin A, B-vitamins, folate, and vitamin C, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, zinc, and iron.

The compound myrcene, also present in significant quantities, has sedative and analgesic properties — it is the same compound found in hops that contributes to the relaxing quality of beer, and in mango that may enhance the effects of other bioactive compounds. Together, the volatile compounds of lemongrass create a pharmacological matrix of considerable complexity and considerable gentleness.

Antimicrobial: Against the Resistant Ones

One of the most urgently relevant areas of lemongrass research in the current decade is its activity against drug-resistant pathogens — the bacteria and fungi that have outpaced conventional antibiotics and for which medicine increasingly lacks effective treatment.

A study determined the antimicrobial effects of lemongrass essential oil against Acinetobacter baumannii — one of the most dangerous drug-resistant hospital pathogens. Antimicrobial resistance was observed in four of five strains, with two strains confirmed as multi-drug-resistant (MDR). All the strains tested were susceptible to both lemongrass oil and citral, with zones of inhibition varying between 17 to 80 millimeters. The ability of lemongrass essential oil and citral to inhibit and kill MDR A. baumannii highlights its potential as an alternative or adjunct therapy in hospital settings where conventional antibiotics have failed.

Different parts and extracts of Cymbopogon citratus are used in traditional medicine to manage anticancer, antimicrobial, antidiarrheal, antiamoebic, antifilarial, antiseptic, antitussive, analgesic, anesthetic, and anti-inflammatory conditions. In terms of antimicrobial activities, extracts and essential oils showed a significant inhibitory effect against bacteria, fungi, and viral agents. These inhibitory effects are related to the capacity of bioactive molecules to impact the cells and intracellular components of treated microorganisms.

Samoans and Tongans use mashed Cymbopogon citratus leaves as a traditional remedy for oral infections. A small randomized controlled trial confirmed the traditional use of lemongrass infusion as an inexpensive remedy for the treatment of oral thrush in HIV/AIDS patients — validating with clinical evidence what Pacific Islander traditional medicine had long practiced.

The Anxious Mind and the GABA Connection

The GABAergic system contributes to the anxiolytic-like effect of essential oil from Cymbopogon citratus.

GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is the brain's primary braking system — the neurotransmitter that slows neural firing and reduces the experience of anxiety, fear, and agitation. Drugs like benzodiazepines work by enhancing GABA activity. The research on lemongrass suggests that citral and related compounds in the essential oil interact with GABA receptors through inhalation — which is exactly why lemongrass aroma has been used in meditation, ritual, and anxiety treatment for centuries across cultures that had no knowledge of GABA at all.

In the folk medicine of the Krahô people of Brazil, lemongrass is believed to have anxiolytic, hypnotic, and anticonvulsant properties. In Brazil, C. citratus is mostly used for treating nervous excitement and gastrointestinal disturbances. The Cuban population has employed the species as an antihypertensive and anti-inflammatory drug. In eastern Nigeria, this plant has been utilized for treating diabetes, obesity, and coronary disease.

A 2024 clinical study published in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research found that lemongrass aromatherapy significantly improved visual and auditory reaction times in healthy participants, with mean visual reaction time decreasing from 0.70 seconds before exposure to 0.63 seconds after — a statistically significant improvement in cognitive processing that aligns with traditional descriptions of the plant as a clarity-promoting herb.

Neuroprotection: A New Chapter

Studies have reported the pharmacological properties of lemongrass including antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, and antimalarial properties. A 2025 study demonstrated that lemongrass infusions exhibit neuroprotective properties through in vitro and in silico studies. Globally, more than three billion people are living with neurological disorders, and these pathologies — which include dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease — share neural cell death, neuroinflammation, and brain damage as common features.

The neuroprotective research on lemongrass is still developing, but the mechanisms being investigated — antioxidant protection of neuronal cells, anti-inflammatory suppression of neuroinflammation, and the GABAergic calming that may reduce the excitotoxicity that damages neurons in neurodegenerative disease — are precisely the mechanisms that matter most in preventing the conditions that increasingly define aging in the modern world.

Anti-Inflammatory: The Quiet Fire

Multiple applications of this plant were described in different latitudes and cultures, including cases of digestive disorders and anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, diaphoretic, stimulating, and antispasmodic conditions.

The anti-inflammatory activity of lemongrass operates through multiple pathways. Citral inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory prostaglandins by suppressing COX-2 enzyme activity — the same target as ibuprofen. Luteolin and quercetin, the flavonoids present in the leaves, suppress NFκB signaling — the master switch of inflammatory gene expression. And geraniol, another volatile compound, has shown direct anti-inflammatory activity in dermal fibroblasts.

The main demonstrated bioactivities of lemongrass are antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antimutagenic, and antidiabetic activities. The antimicrobial activity is the most extensively explained, but lemongrass essential oil also sensitized methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to methicillin up to 9.6 times, and sensitized doxorubicin-resistant ovarian carcinoma cells to doxorubicin up to 1.8 times.

This last finding is remarkable: lemongrass does not merely fight bacteria and cancer cells directly — it makes them susceptible again to antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs they had learned to resist. This is the P-glycoprotein efflux pump inhibition mechanism, by which cancer cells and resistant bacteria pump drugs out of themselves before they can act. Lemongrass blocks this escape hatch. The traditional wound medicine and fever grass turns out to be interfering with one of the most sophisticated resistance mechanisms that cancer and infectious disease have developed.

Fever Grass: The Original Use

The name by which lemongrass is known in the Caribbean — fever grass — is its most honest name, and its oldest established function. Fevers were, until the 20th century, among the most common causes of death worldwide. A plant that reliably reduced fever without causing harm was a genuinely life-saving medicine in communities without pharmaceutical access.

Lemongrass reduces fever through the sudorific mechanism — promoting perspiration — and through direct antipyretic effects in which its compounds suppress the inflammatory signaling that drives the fever-generating response. This is the same dual mechanism as aspirin, which both reduces prostaglandin synthesis (suppressing the fever signal) and promotes heat dissipation through peripheral vasodilation.

Widely known as "Fever Grass," lemongrass is popular in Asian countries since ancient times for its ability to bring down fever and normalize the body temperature during hot weather. It is either used in tea or in foot-baths for reducing fever and excess heat in the body.

The foot bath is a particularly interesting application — immersing the feet in hot lemongrass-infused water promotes peripheral vasodilation, drawing blood to the surface of the body and facilitating heat dissipation through the skin. This is applied physiology, arrived at by observation rather than medical training, and it works.

Tom Yam, Bún Bò Huế, and the Culinary Pharmacy

Lemongrass is inseparable from the flavors of Southeast Asian cooking — the aromatic backbone of Thai tom yam soup, Vietnamese bún bò Huế, Balinese spice pastes, Lao and Cambodian curries, Sri Lankan rice and curry. Lemongrass in Thailand is called takhrai. It is the essential ingredient of tom yam and tom kha kai.

What is remarkable about lemongrass in cooking — as with ginger, turmeric, and garlic in their respective culinary traditions — is that the plant's medicinal properties are delivered at every meal. Every bowl of tom yam contains citral, myrcene, and linalool in amounts sufficient to support digestion, reduce inflammation, and provide antimicrobial protection against foodborne pathogens. The kitchen and the pharmacy are, in these traditions, the same room.

This is the model of food-as-medicine that Ayurveda articulates explicitly and that Southeast Asian cooking practices implicitly: the daily meal is the primary medical intervention, and the herbs and aromatics that flavor it are chosen, over generations of empirical observation, for what they do to the body as well as what they do to the palate.

The Cholesterol Connection

In Brazil, a study examined the effects of lemongrass essential oil on cholesterol. The essential oil, composed of over 70 percent citral, showed anti-hyperlipidemic effects in animal studies, with reduction in cholesterol levels observed without toxic signs such as death, piloerection, abdominal contortions, or convulsions in treated animals.

Research published in Food and Chemical Toxicology revealed that the essential oils in lemongrass possess anti-hyperlipidemic and anti-hypercholesterolemic properties. These effects are mediated through multiple mechanisms — citral's interference with cholesterol synthesis pathways, the antioxidant protection of LDL cholesterol against oxidation (the step that makes cholesterol truly dangerous), and the anti-inflammatory reduction of the arterial inflammation that allows cholesterol plaques to form.

Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. A plant that grows in kitchen gardens throughout the tropical belt — freely, abundantly, requiring little more than warmth and water — and that has demonstrable cholesterol-lowering and anti-inflammatory effects is a resource of considerable public health significance, particularly for the populations that have always used it.

The Citronella Connection: The Repellent That Is Also Medicine

Cymbopogon nardus — citronella grass, a close relative of lemongrass — is the source of citronella oil, perhaps the most widely used natural insect repellent on earth. Citronella oil is produced from a species of lemongrass. Lemongrass is a natural insect repellent.

The traditional practice of planting lemongrass around the perimeter of homes in Southeast Asia and Africa — understood as protection against evil spirits, negative energy, and misfortune — is also, simultaneously, a public health intervention against malaria-carrying mosquitoes, dengue fever vectors, and the stable flies that spread disease to livestock. The spiritual explanation and the epidemiological explanation operate in parallel, both pointing at the same practical outcome: fewer insect bites, less disease.

This is the kind of convergent wisdom that makes traditional plant knowledge so worth studying carefully: the reason given may be symbolic or cosmological, but the practice it encodes may be epidemiologically correct.

Conclusion: The Grass That Clears the Air

Lemongrass is not a dramatic plant. It does not erupt from legend or demand sacred space. It grows along paths and at the edges of things — cultivated for convenience, available at any moment, bruised between the fingers to release the fragrance that has served so many purposes across so many lifetimes.

The importance of natural plant materials in modern medicine is considerable, and raw materials with antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer properties are still sought because of microbial resistance and difficulties in anticancer therapy. This review focuses on lemongrass and its properties and applications. Multiple applications of this plant were described in different latitudes and cultures.

What brings all those applications together — the fever grass of the Caribbean, the ritual smudge of the Indonesian shaman, the tom yam of the Bangkok street vendor, the van van oil of the Hoodoo practitioner, the anxiolytic tea of the Brazilian Amazon, the Ayurvedic preparation for weak digestion, the clinical trial testing its effect on drug-resistant Staphylococcus — is the same plant, producing the same compounds, interacting with the same biochemistry, in bodies that are, across all the differences of culture and geography, essentially the same.

The grass grew in the tropics and people everywhere noticed what it did. They called it different things in different languages and gave it different spiritual significances in different cosmologies. They planted it at their doorways for different stated reasons. But what they were doing, in each case, was the same thing: bringing a pharmacopeia into the threshold of daily life, letting it breathe its medicine into the air, and trusting what generations of careful attention had taught them to trust.

The lemongrass doesn't know it's been useful for five thousand years. It is simply doing what it does — growing, breathing, releasing its citral into the humid air, sharp and green and clearing — waiting, as it has always waited, at the edge of wherever people live.