Hops are native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, with wild populations spanning from Portugal to Central Asia and across North America. Genetic studies point to a deep split between European and Asian-North American hop lineages that occurred roughly 1 to 1.3 million years ago, meaning the plant has been growing wild across these continents far longer than humans have been cultivating it.
The Wild Plant’s Native Range
The common hop, Humulus lupulus, grows wild across a remarkably wide belt of the Northern Hemisphere. European wild hops stretch from Portugal eastward through the Caucasus mountains and into the Altai region of Central Asia. A separate genetic group covers East Asia and North America, with North American hops likely descending from populations that migrated from Asia across ancient land bridges. Molecular phylogeny research published in the journal Heredity confirmed this primary split and found that North American wild hops are especially genetically diverse, suggesting they’ve been evolving independently for a long time.
Within North America, several distinct subspecies occupy different ecological niches. One native variety grows in riparian forests and shrub thickets across New England. Another, sometimes called the neomexicanus type, is found in the American Southwest. These aren’t escaped garden plants. They’re genuinely wild populations with their own genetic signatures, adapted to local soils and climates over hundreds of thousands of years.
A Close Relative of Cannabis
Hops belong to the Cannabaceae family, making them a botanical cousin of hemp and cannabis. The two genera shared a common ancestor and diverged somewhere between 16 and 23 million years ago, depending on the dating method used. A 2023 genomic study of the Cascade hop variety estimated the split at roughly 22.6 million years ago using one statistical model, while a separate analysis of gene duplication patterns placed it closer to 16 million years ago. Either way, the relationship is ancient. The two plants look nothing alike today, but they share certain chemical traits, including the production of aromatic resin compounds in their flowers.
Ancient Uses Before Brewing
Long before anyone dropped hops into a kettle of beer, people knew the plant as a medicinal herb. Hop pollen has been found at archaeological sites in England dating to around 3000 B.C., during the Stone Age. Ancient Egyptians used hops medicinally, and during Roman times the plant was valued for treating liver diseases, digestive problems, and as a blood purifier. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote about the plant’s aggressive climbing habit, comparing it to a wolf strangling a sheep. That image stuck: the scientific species name “lupulus” comes from the Latin word for wolf.
The English word “hop” itself traces back to the Anglo-Saxon word “hoppan,” meaning to climb, a nod to the plant’s vigorous twining vines that can grow several meters in a single season. The genus name “Humulus” likely derives from “humus,” the rich organic soil the plant thrives in.
From Wild Plant to Brewing Ingredient
The shift from wild herb to brewing staple happened gradually in medieval Europe. In Bavaria, documentary evidence of hop cultivation dates to the 9th century, with both the town of Geisenfeld and the village of Gründl near Nandlstadt claiming to be the birthplace of hop farming in the Hallertau region. The Hallertau didn’t become the dominant hop-growing area it is today until the 19th century, when its favorable soil and climate gave it a competitive edge. It remains the largest hop-producing region in the world.
The practice of hopping beer spread unevenly across Europe. England held out for centuries. The English national drink was ale, an unhopped brew sometimes flavored with herbs like wormwood. Hop cultivation probably arrived in England from Flanders (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands) at the end of the 15th century, taking root in the Maidstone area of Kent. English drinkers were not enthusiastic. The bittering effect of hops was “reluctantly accepted,” and the early motivation for using them was purely practical: hops preserved beer longer than herbal alternatives.
England’s Slow Acceptance
The quality of imported hops became a serious problem in early English brewing. Flemish dried hops arriving in England were so full of contaminants that Parliament passed an act in 1603 imposing penalties on anyone caught dealing in hops adulterated with “leaves, stalks, powder, sand, straw and with loggetts of wood dross.” By 1710, the government imposed a duty on hops and went further, prohibiting the use of any bittering agent other than hops in beer, on the grounds that hops were “far more wholesome” than alternatives. What started as a foreign novelty had become, within two centuries, legally mandated.
Kent established itself as the center of English hop growing, a position it held for hundreds of years. The annual hop harvest became a cultural event, drawing seasonal workers from London’s East End well into the 20th century.
How Hops Reached the Americas
While wild hops already grew across North America, European settlers brought their own cultivated varieties for brewing. These imported European strains became the foundation of commercial hop farming in the United States, first in New England and New York, later shifting westward to the Pacific Northwest. Today, Washington’s Yakima Valley produces the majority of American hops. The native wild subspecies, meanwhile, have become increasingly interesting to craft brewers and hop breeders looking for unusual flavor profiles and disease resistance genes that centuries of European cultivation may have bred out.