I've seen it around before but didn't think much of it until Lorena pointed one out as a medicinal herb and also one for cooking. My neighbor across the street has some and it tasted a little like mint to me and neighbors think it tastes like Vicks Vapor Rub (Va-pa-roo) which is eucalyptus.
For some reason all the neighbors know it as Palo Santo so my Internet searches turned up empty until today. There is an amazing amount of recipe pages, fotos and videos for it's many uses. Mostly wraps for cooking but but just cut up for flavoring as well. Not sure if I can take cuttings or if it spreads in the roots. I will go to a vivero (plant nursery) if I have to. Don't know what is in that wrap below but it sure looks good.
The video is the only one I found in English (many in Spanish) ... and the info below is from Wikipedia to fill in a bit.
Hoja santa (Piper auritum) is an aromatic herb with a heart-shaped, velvety leaf which grows in tropic Mesoamerica. The name hoja santa means "sacred leaf" in Spanish. It is also known as yerba santa, hierba santa, Mexican pepperleaf, acuyo, tlanepa, anisillo, root beer plant, and sacred pepper.
The leaves can reach up to 30 centimeters (12 in) or more in size. The complex flavor of hoja santa is not so easily described; it has been compared to eucalyptus, licorice, sassafras, anise, nutmeg, mint, tarragon, and black pepper. The flavor is stronger in the young stems and veins.
It is native to the Americas, from northern South America to Mexico, and is also cultivated in southeast Florida.
It is often used in Mexican cuisine for tamales, the fish or meat wrapped in fragrant leaves for cooking, and as an essential ingredient in mole verde, the green sauce originated in the Oaxaca region of Mexico. It is also chopped to flavor soups, such as pozole, and eggs. In Central Mexico, it is used to flavor chocolate drinks. In southeastern Mexico, a green liquor called Verdín is made from hoja santa. It is also used for tea. American cheesemaker Paula Lambert created "Hoja santa cheese", goat cheese wrapped with the hoja santa leaves and imbued with its flavor. While typically used fresh, it is also used in dried form, although drying removes much of the flavor and makes the leaf too brittle to be used as a wrapper.
The essential oils within the leaf are rich in safrole, a substance also found in sassafras, which has been shown to be carcinogenic in animals. In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned sassafras bark along with sassafras oil and safrole as flavoring agents because of their carcinogenic properties and the Council of Europe imposed the same ban in 1974, although toxicological studies show that humans do not process safrole into its carcinogenic metabolite.
