The plants and herbs Geralt can gather and use in The Witcher games are not unique to the game. Even in the first book translated to English, The Last Wish, there are mentions of numerous plants. In the short story "The Witcher", a couple are mentioned as ingredients of potions, but most of the mentions occur in the sixth part of the framing story, "The Voice of Reason" where Nenneke discusses the plants found in the grotto with the witcher and climate change in the world.
Some of them can easily be matched with the plants found in the game, but not nearly all of them. A good number of them are also plants found in the real world.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Artemisia absinthium, or wormwood, used in aphrodisiacs (also known as absinthe) | |
| "shoots of arenaria strewn with berries as red as blood" | |
| another name for Deadly nightshade | |
| Deadly nightshade | |
| a tree with poisonous sap | |
| a common plant with medicinal properties | |
| magical root with healing properties, used with purple living bone | |
| small flowering shrub whose blooms are used in aphrodisiacs | |
| found in alpine or sub-alpine meadows where snow is common, used to treat eye infections | |
| "the meaty, thickly-veined leaves of fastaim" | |
| a food and fibre crop that is grown in cooler regions of the world | |
| likely Hawthorn (Crataegus) | |
| "'A field of this size emits a strong aura against magic. Most spells will be useless here.'" | |
| "'Those are hops — their pollen has the same effect.'" | |
| a genus of flowering mostly herbaceous perennial plants 0.3–1.5 m (0.98–4.9 ft) tall, but some are annual plants and a few are shrubs up to 3 m (9.8 ft) tall | |
| root with magical properties | |
| "the crimson-golden ovals of measure-me-nots" | |
| "stretches of star-leafed melilote" | |
| also known as "wolfsbane", is a druids' herb. | |
| possibly a type of lily, but also possibly a variant name for monk's hood | |
| "the tiger-striped petals of the mousetail orchid" | |
| most likely deadly nightshade, but possibly any of an economically important family of flowering plants. Certain species are universally known for their medicinal uses, their psychotropic effects, or for being poisonous | |
| "pinnated pondblood moss huddled against stone blocks" | |
| "compact balls of puffheads pouring out of huge flowerpots" | |
| magical plant with healing properties, used with conynhaela | |
| "the glistening tubers of raven's eye" | |
| "huge pinnated leaves of sand-spurry flybush" | |
| "the dark arrows of sawcuts" | |
| flowering plants which superficially resemble grasses or rushes | |
| annual or perennial herb, woody shrubs or trees with a caustic, poisonous milky sap | |
| Datura stramonium, a hallucinogenic member of the nightshade family; also known as "jimsonweed" | |
| any of several species of culinary and medicinal herbs | |
| Paris quadrifolia, a four-leaved plant found throughout Europe that produces a single, poisonous fruit. Subject of the medieval poem "The Four Leaves Of The Truelove" | |
| interestingly also known as "false hellebore" | |
| a genus of about 140 species of flowering plants in the legume family |
Subterranean plants[ | ]
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| "reachcluster, an antidote to every known toxin and venom." | |
| "The modest yellow-grey brushes peering from chests deeply sunken into the ground revealed scarix, a root with powerful and universal medicinal qualities." | |
| "In the shady part of the grotto bulged caps of the sewant mushroom, grey as the stones in a field." |
Aqueous plants[ | ]
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| "Glass reservoirs full of gnarled rhizomes of the hallucinogenic bitip" | |
| "slender, dark-green cryptocorines" | |
| "vats full of hornwort" | |
| "tanks covered in a compact skin of liverwort, fodder for the parasitic giant oyster." | |
| probably tiny green water plants which tend to grow on the surface of ponds |
Organisms[ | ]
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| "clusters of nematodes", in the books, it is not exactly clear is these are meant to refer to plants or animals, these are usually tiny wormlike organisms and not plants. | |
| a type of fungus | |
| a very large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms | |
| a fungus that grows in the form of multicellular filaments | |
| a composite organism consisting of a fungus (the mycobiont) and a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont or phycobiont) growing together in a symbiotic relationship |