originally posted: March 31, 2003 | by chelsie

John Gerard (1597) did not believe apples (Malus sylvestris Miller or M. pumila Miller) were good for one's health; when Thomas Johnson revised The Herbal in 1633, he added nothing to change that opinion. "The Latine name Malus reacheth far among the old Writers..." Malus means bad or evil, the name coming from the story of Eden. "All Apples be of a temperature cold and moist, and have joined with them a certaine excrementall or superfluous moisture...." [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 24, 2003 | by chelsie

Lavenders (genus: Lavandula) are native to the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic islands, areas with dry summers and mild winters. In 1597, John Gerard described three "Lavander Spikes"--"floures of a blew colour", "milke white floures", and one "altogether lesser...the floures of a more purple colour" in his Herbal. These appear varieties of 'English' lavender (Lavandula angustifolia Miller). [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 17, 2003 | by chelsie

The three hundred or so species of willows (genus: Salix) are generally native to the Northern Hemisphere. John Gerard listed seven species in his 1597 edition of The Herbal or General Historie of Plants; Thomas Johnson added an eighth to the 1633 edition. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 10, 2003 | by chelsie

Lenten rose is a name applied to Helleborus orientalis Lamarck, a plant native to Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor. The common name refers to its bloom time and to differentiate it from the Christmas rose or Christe Herbe (Helleborus niger Linnaeus), a name given according to Gerard, because the plants "floureth about Christmasse..." Hellebores often bloom in snow. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: March 3, 2003 | by chelsie

The red rattle or lousewort (Pedicularis sylvatica Linnaeus) is native to temperate zones of Europe and Asia. In 1597, John Gerard wrote, "Red rattle...hath very small, rent, or jagged leaves, of a browne red colour, and weake, small and tender stalkes, whereof some lie along trailing upon the ground; within very moorish medowes they grow a cubit high and more, but in moist and wet heathes, and such like barren ground not above an handful high." [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 24, 2003 | by chelsie

Bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria (Molina) Standley) may well be one of the first plants cultivated by humans. The fruit, dry and hollow when ripe, would immediately be recognized as useful. In 1597, John Gerard wrote, "There be divers sorts of Gourds, some wilde, and others tame of the garden....I will onely figure and describe two or three of the chiefest, and so passe over the rest...." The garden gourds, he called Cucurbita lagenaria; the wild, Cucurbita lagenaria sylvestris. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 17, 2003 | by chelsie

The wild or Indian turnip (Arisaema triphyllum (L.) Schott), like other members of the Araceae (aroid family), contains needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals, raphides, which ingested cause burning pain, swelling of the tongue and membranes of the mouth, and can be fatal. In the mid-1800s the raphides had yet to be discovered by chemists. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 10, 2003 | by chelsie

In The Herbal, Or General Historie of Plants, John Gerard (1597) wrote of the four known citrus--the citron, limon, orange, and Assyrian apple (grapefruit). Citrus were known to the ancients--Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, and Jews, then mostly forgotten after the fall of the Roman Empire. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: February 3, 2003 | by chelsie

Prior to the advent of Christianity, certain hallowed trees--oak, ash, hazel, and elder (Sambucus nigra Linnaeus) were held in high regard in Northern Europe. The convention of addressing the trees in the feminine, frau or dame, continued through the Middle Ages. Oddly, Linnaeus retained this convention with the botanical names of trees. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 27, 2003 | by chelsie

When King Oedipus was exiled from Thebes, his twin sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, agreed to share rule of the city. Each would rule a year, abdicating the throne to the other at year's end. Eteocles, the elder brother ruled the first year, but when time came for him to give the throne to Polyneices, he refused. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 20, 2003 | by chelsie

Hemlock (Conium maculatum Linnaeus) is native to roadsides, ditches, and floodplains of Europe and western Asia and naturalized in the Americas. It is a member of the Apiaceae, the parsley and carrot family. Hemlock is a beautiful weed and virulently toxic. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 13, 2003 | by chelsie

The female fern or bracken (Pteridium aquilinum (Linnaeus) Kuhn) [ter rid' ee um ak kwi li' num] grows around the world with twelve geographic varieties. Tri-pinnate leaves arise from an underground rhizome. The crosiers (curled fronds) have been eaten, but it is now known that the fern contains carcinogenic compounds. [Click here to read more...]

originally posted: January 6, 2003 | by chelsie

John Gerard (1597) believed, wrongly, the sesame (Sesamum orientale Linnaeus) to be a pulse, a member of the pea and bean family. Although the plant was well-known to the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians since ancient times, Gerard had no first-hand knowledge of sesame, "It is a stranger in England. [W]e are constrained for want of an English name to use the Latine: it is unknowne to the Apothecaries, especially the plant it selfe...." [Click here to read more...]