Who were the lavenders?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

March 25, 2003

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Lavender was a familiar plant in English gardens in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1653, Nicholas Culpeper (The Compleat Herbal) went so far as to write, "Being an inhabitant almost in every garden, it is so well known, that it needs no description." Fifty-six years earlier, John Gerard had described three "Lavander Spikes" and three "French Lavanders" or "Stickeadoves" in The Herbal.

Washing Day by Pierre Edouard Frere
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Stickeadove or Sticadove was the Middle English common name for French lavender (Lavandula stoechas Linnaeus). The Romans used many kinds of lavender including a particular lavender growing in the Stoechades [ste ka' des], islands now known as Îles d'Hyères. The French lavenders were called by Gerard, Stoechas, but the Roman name of the islands, and hence the herb, remained among the "simple people" as stickeadove.

According to Mrs. Grieve (1931), by the Middle Ages, the plants were associated with St. John and branches were tossed onto bonfires on St. John's day (June 24th) to drive away "evil spirits" that may be abroad. Sprigs of lavender were a strewing herb in churches and in homes. It was sold in bunches by street vendors and placed in linen closets. Lavender was burned in sick rooms to clean the air; the powerful fragrance covered a multitude of 'sins'. Strangely, no one is certain when lavender cultivation began in England; the plants cannot survive in cold, damp climates without human intervention.

Lavender changed our language; the roots go back to the Romans, particularly the Roman habit of washing, lavare, bathing, lavatio, and a Roman bath, lavabrum. Lavender, originally called spica for the flower spikes, was so generally associated with bathing that it became lavandula, the name retained in New Latin for the generic designation.

According to the 1889 Century Unabridged Dictionary, in Middle English (12th to 15th centuries), washer women were called lavanders or lavenders; to lavender meant to launder, and lavatories were stone-floored rooms for washing clothes. Lavender, the plant, went along to keep the fabrics fresh-smelling (and probably to keep insects out). Gerard, living at the end of the Middle Ages, actually spelled lavender as lauander.

Sometime after the Romans invaded Britannia (England) in 54 BCE, they discovered a hot spring and in succeeding years built a temple and bath complex with the sacred spring at its heart. There is no archaeological evidence the Romans ever cultivated lavender there, but as they imported olive oil, they may have also imported lavender. The Roman Baths in Bath, England has a beautiful site about the ancient Roman ruins. To view the site and take a virtual tour, click on the link:

http://www.romanbaths.co.uk/

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