Bay laurel

Family

Lauraceae

Habit

Shrub

Height

12 m

Spread

10 m

Growth

slow

Lifespan

100 years

First yield

after 6 years

Yield per plant

up to 5 kg a year

Hardiness

zone 8–11

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam

Soil moisture

dry – very moist

pH

6 – 8.5

Synonyms

Lorbeer

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: Blätter – frisch oder getrocknet. Lorbeerblätter sind ein würziges, aromatisches Gewürz und werden häufig zum Würzen von Suppen, Eintöpfen usw. verwendet und sind ein wesentlicher Bestandteil der Kräutermischung „Bouquet Garni“. Die Blätter können frisch verwendet oder im Sommer geerntet und getrocknet werden. Frisch getrocknete, zerkleinerte oder geraspelte Blätter haben einen intensiveren Geschmack als frische Blätter, sollten aber nicht länger als ein Jahr gelagert werden, da sie sonst ihr Aroma verlieren. Die getrockneten Früchte werden als Aroma verwendet. Aus den getrockneten Blättern wird Kräutertee aufgebrüht. Das aus den Blättern gewonnene ätherische Öl wird als Lebensmittelaroma verwendet. Die Ausbeute kann zwischen 1 und 3 % Öl variieren.

Medicinal: The laurel tree has a long tradition in folk medicine, being used to treat various ailments, especially aiding digestion and for conditions like bronchitis and flu. It has also been used in the treatment of different types of cancer. While the fruits and leaves are typically not ingested internally, they have been historically used for issues such as hysteria, amenorrhea, bloating, and colic. Reports suggest that the leaves are primarily used for upper respiratory conditions and to alleviate arthritic pain. The laurel tree has a calming effect on the stomach, stimulates appetite, and enhances the production of digestive juices. Its leaves have various properties such as antiseptic, aromatic, astringent, carminative, diaphoretic, digestive, diuretic, emetic in high doses, menstruation-inducing, narcotic, parasiticidal, stimulating, and stomach-strengthening. The fruit also possesses antiseptic, aromatic, digestive, narcotic, and stimulating properties. An infusion of the laurel tree is used to boost appetite and as a menopausal aid. The fruit is utilized in the production of carminative medicines and historically for inducing abortions. The fatty oil from the fruit is applied externally for treating sprains, bruises, and sometimes used as ear drops for pain relief. The essential oil from the leaves has narcotic, antibacterial, and antifungal qualities.

Other uses: Beyond the kitchen, bay yields above all its oils. The ripe berries are pressed for a fatty green bay oil, the characteristic component of Syrian Aleppo soap — the higher its share, the finer the soap is held to be. The leaf oil goes into perfumery and cosmetics. Dried leaves are an old means of protecting stores: laid among flour, grain and pulses they keep weevils and storage beetles away, and as a strewing herb they were spread on floors for their scent and antiseptic effect. The wood is sweetly scented, fine-grained and wear-resistant and is used for inlay work, walking sticks and fire-drill sticks. In the garden the main practical use is clipping: as a shear-tolerant evergreen it serves as hedge, screen and shade-giver in agroforestry plantings in mild regions.

Site: In Central Europe bay is a container plant, and the question of site is essentially the question of winter quarters — without a bright, frost-free room at zero to ten degrees it will not work. In summer it wants the warm, sheltered spot on the south side, but it also takes half-shaded corners where other container plants give up. It is extremely tolerant of clipping and is the classic formal shrub for cones, balls and standards beside doors and seating areas. The berries stain light paving slightly. Fruit set is the exception anyway: the species is usually dioecious, so berries need a female and a male plant. It carries no diseases onward, and its aromatic leaves keep storage pests away, which makes it a good neighbour for store rooms. Care: In a pot it grows slowly and needs a larger container every two to three years with a structurally stable, free-draining substrate; waterlogging brings root rot. Feed moderately every two weeks from May to August and stop in September so the shoots ripen before winter. Prune in spring before growth starts or after the first flush; it breaks willingly from old wood. Winter quarters are the critical phase: plants overwintered too warm and too dark attract scale and mealybugs, followed by sooty mould on the sticky leaves — keep them cool and bright, water sparingly, check regularly. The bay sucker rolls the leaf margins into blisters in summer; cutting out affected shoot tips is enough.

Bay can be raised from seed and from cuttings, and both call for patience. The seeds are oil-rich and short-lived: they must be taken fresh from the ripe berry, cleaned of pulp and sown at once, because stored seed loses viability quickly. Germinate warm and evenly moist, allowing two to three months, with individual seeds lying over for more than a year. Because the species is usually dioecious, the sex of seedlings only shows with the first flowering — anyone wanting berries raises several plants. More reliable and true to type are cuttings of half-ripe shoots in July and August, rooted with bottom heat under film or a cover; three to six months is normal, and heeled cuttings taken in winter need longer still. Older plants throw root suckers that can be severed, and low branches layer reliably.

Bay flowers small and inconspicuous in yellowish green from April to May and is usually dioecious. Its floral offering is not lavish but it is taken up: honeybees, furrow bees and parasitic wasps are recorded as visitors, and the wasps in particular make it a staging point for beneficial insects that go on to parasitise aphids nearby. The blue-black single-seeded berries ripen in autumn and are eaten by birds, which disperse the seed — in the Mediterranean this is the normal route of regeneration. Its largest contribution, though, is structural: as a densely leaved evergreen it offers cover, roosting and nesting opportunity all year, and the slowly rotting leathery leaf litter shelters overwintering invertebrates. It is not a larval food plant for Central European butterflies or moths, and in a container its contribution is necessarily small.

Special features: the nymph Daphne fled Apollo + was turned into a bay tree → he wore the wreath as a sign of unrequited love; Roman triumphators wore it too, hence to rest on one's laurels; poeta laureatus + baccalaureate from bacca lauri = bay berry; the Pythia at Delphi is said to have chewed bay leaves; genuine laurel forest survives on La Gomera.

Mediterranean and Near East: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, southern France, Italy with Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, the Balkan peninsula, Turkey, the Aegean islands, Crete, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan. Its centre lies in the eastern Mediterranean, from where cultivation carried it westwards over millennia; in Spain and Portugal it therefore counts as a naturalised introduction. On La Gomera the Garajonay national park holds a relict stand of genuine subtropical laurel forest, a remnant of the vegetation that covered much of southern Europe before the ice ages. There are no outdoor populations in Central Europe: planted out, bay survives only in the mildest spots along the Rhine, around Lake Constance and in wine-growing climates, and even there with winter protection.

Bay belongs to the evergreen sclerophyll vegetation of the Mediterranean, but it is not a plant of the dry slopes — it takes the moister special sites: shaded gorges, spring slopes, north-facing rock faces, streamside thickets and the fresher margins of the maquis. It tolerates deep shade better than drought and prefers moderately dry to fresh, loose, slightly acid to neutral soils. Historically it is a survivor of the Tertiary laurel forests, which have largely vanished from the Mediterranean and persisted only on the Atlantic islands. What limits it ecologically is winter, not summer: established plants survive short frosts to around minus ten degrees, young and freshly flushed growth considerably less, and prolonged bare frost with winter sun causes desiccation damage.