The species of this plant is used in traditional medicine. Culpeper: “... taken inwardly resist pestilence and poison, helps ruptures, and bruises, stays fluxes, vomiting and immoderate flowing of the terms in women, helps inflammations and soreness of the mouth, and fastens loose teeth, being bruised and boiled in white wine and the mouth washed with it.”

The species of this plant is still used in modern herbal medicine for a similar wide variety of internal conditions, but it can also be cooked and eaten as a vegetable. The use to relieve toothache, applied as a paste to the affected tooth, seems to have been widespread.

Previously grown as Persicaria bistorta 'Superba'