Rosaceae
Rubus idaeus
Raspberry · Red raspberry leaf
- Part used
- leaffruit
- Native range
- Europe and northern Asia; naturalised in North America and elsewhere
- Morphology
- A prickly perennial with biennial canes, pinnate leaves white-felted beneath, and white flowers followed by the aggregate fruit, which separates from its core when picked.
What is in it
Evidence
One of the most widely used herbs in pregnancy and one of the least adequately studied. A small number of trials and observational studies find no clear effect on labour duration, with weak signals on second-stage duration and instrumental delivery. No good evidence of benefit and no clear evidence of harm.
Safety
Widely used in late pregnancy without a documented pattern of harm, which is reassuring but is not the same as having been tested. Uterine effects are the entire point of the traditional use and are not well characterised, which is why advice generally restricts it to the third trimester. Anyone using it in pregnancy should tell their midwife or obstetrician.
Interactions: Theoretical effects on blood glucose; Tannins reduce iron absorption, which matters in pregnancy
Regulatory: Permitted as a food and as a listed ingredient.
How the traditions classify it
Three systems, rating the same plant. Where they disagree, none of them is correcting the others — they are separate frameworks that arrived at their categories independently.
Historical use
The leaf has a long and specific European tradition as a preparation taken in the later stages of pregnancy, held to tone the uterus and ease labour. That use remains widespread among midwives and pregnant women today.
Recorded as history and attributed where possible. Long use establishes that a plant was widely used, not that it worked, and not that it was safe.
Worth knowing
Raspberry leaf is the herb in this collection most widely taken by the population in which evidence matters most and exists least.
It is used by a large proportion of pregnant women in Britain, Australia and elsewhere, frequently on the advice of midwives, and the trial literature amounts to a handful of small studies that find essentially nothing either way. The reason is not neglect exactly — running randomised trials in pregnancy is genuinely difficult and ethically fraught — but the result is that a preparation taken by hundreds of thousands of women annually sits in the mixed column on almost no data.
Its tannin content also reduces iron absorption, which is worth knowing in a group routinely managed for iron deficiency and is almost never mentioned.
Nomenclature verified against GBIF backbone taxonomy.