Above, from left: A strawberry tree growing in a sheltered corner in Trie garden; Arbutus unedo in fruit in the woodland of The Unicorn At Bay; the evergreen strawberry tree bears flowers and fruit simultaneously in late October.

A native of the Mediterranean, the strawberry tree (Arbutus unedo) is valued as an ornamental evergreen whose late-blooming flowers and red fruits enliven the garden in late fall and early winter, when few other species are of interest. The common name derives from the description of the tree made by Pliny the Elder, who compares the fruit, with its thin, rough, red rind, to that of the strawberry, Fragaria vesca. He believed the two plants to be related, and states that the strawberry is the only fruit that grows both on a bush and on the ground, although he acknowledges that the flesh of the two fruits is quite different (Historia Naturalis, Book XV.xxviii. 98-99). The fruit of the arbutus much more closely resembles that of the lychee, although they are not botanically related. The specific epithet unedo (from the Latin unum edo, or “I eat one”) derives from the same passage. According to Pliny, the fruit is so insipid that no one who has tasted it will be tempted to eat another.

I’ve never tasted the “strawberries” myself, and our own specimen, although flowering freely, has no fruit to sample this year. (The tree is at the limit of its cold-hardiness here at The Cloisters, and it suffered some winter damage last year. We were forced to prune the wood that had died back, thus sacrificing this year’s fruit.) Many people do describe the fruit as bland and uninteresting, but not everyone. For a long and lively discussion of its flavor and for recipes for making both preserves and a traditional Portuguese liqueur called medronheira from arbutus fruit, see the comments appended to the Plant Portrait on the Plants For A Future Database.

Dioscorides mentions the fruit of the arbutus without assigning any medicinal virtues to it. He warns that it is bad for the stomach and that it causes headaches (De Materia Medica, Book 1.175). Although Dioscorides may be referring to a related species, Arbutus andrachne, also found in Greece, the sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard applied these caveats to A. unedo, and followed Pliny in his description of the fruit as being without relish, although he notes that thrushes and other birds are fond of it.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

E. J. Alexander and Carol H. Woodward. The Flora of The Unicorn Tapestries. Second edition. New York: The New York Botanical Garden, 1947.

Anderson, Frank J, ed. “Herbals through 1500,” The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 90. New York: Abaris, 1984.

Dirr, Michael. Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. Fourth edition. Champaign, IL: Stipes Publishing Company, 1990.

Grieve, Maude. A Modern Herbal. 1931. Reprint: New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Grigson, Geoffrey. The Englishman’s Flora. 1955. Reprint: London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1987.

Gunther, Robert T., ed. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides Translated by John Goodyer 1655. 1934. Reprint. New York: Hafner Publishing, 1968.

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Above, from left: The medicinal teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, growing in Bonnefont garden; a teasel depicted in the foreground of The Hunt of the Frail Stag: Vanity Sounds the Horn, and Ignorance Unleashes the Hounds Overconfidence, Rashness, and Desire, South Netherlandish, about 1500–1525, Wool and silk, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Mary Stillman Harkness, 1950 (50.145.4); detail of the flower head, whose straight spines distinguish this species from D. sativus.

The principal medieval uses of the wild teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, were medicinal. (See last week’s post for uses of the cultivated form.) In the De Materia Medica (Book III. 13), the ancient herbalist Dioscorides groups teasel with other prickly plants of the thistle tribe, but teasel does not belong to the Compositae (daisy) family, as true thistles do. (I wrote extensively about thistles last year. See a list of thistle-related posts.) Dioscorides compares the spiny flower head of the teasel to a hedgehog, and gives several medicinal uses for small “worms” that can be found inside: sufferers from intermittent fevers were instructed to put the worms in a purse and hang it around their necks. He also recommended mixing the root with wine to cured anal fissures and fistulas.

The teasel, or ‘Cameleon,’ is depicted in a number of medieval herbal manuscripts, including the Herbal of Apuleius Platonicus. Although the representations of teasel in these sources vary widely in their realism, the spiny heads are consistently emphasized. In general, the prickly character of the plant seems to have been taken as a sign of its efficacy against fistulas and hemorrhoids, boils, abscesses and ulcers of all kinds, and poisoned bites.

The fifteenth-century Herbarius Latinus maintains that the plant was also a strong diuretic. [According to the Roman natural historian Pliny, the plant grew on watery ground (Book XXVII.71)]. The name Dipsacus given to the genus derives from the Greek verb “to be thirsty,” and the propensity of the plant to gather rainwater and dew in the cup formed by its perfoliate (pierced by the stem) leaves has been noted since antiquity. It was known to the Romans as labrum Veneris, or “Venus’s lip.” One of the common names used by Renaissance writers is “Venus’s basin.” The water gathered in the plant’s leaves was believed to have cosmetic and curative powers and to be especially effective in removing warts. In Adam in Eden, a history of plants published in 1568, the herbalist William Coles uses the teasel’s association with Venus and its prickliness to point a moral lesson, comparing the flower heads to whores who tear and destroy both the estates and the bodies of those who consort with them.

The teasel represented in the foreground of the tapestry shown above may have been used to enhance the work’s allegorical theme. The Hunt of the Frail Stag is a symbolic representation of human frailty and vulnerability to vice. The teasel in the scene may symbolize the toil and tribulation brought into the world at the Fall of Man. (According to the book of Genesis, thistles and thorns did not exist in Eden, but came into being when God cursed the earth after Adam and Eve sinned.) Another fragment from the same series, currently on view at The Cloisters, shows Old Age driving the stag out of a lake. The hounds Heat, Grief, Cold, Anxiety, Age, and Heaviness pursue him and a large and very thorny rosebush is shown beneath the forelegs of the stag.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Anderson, Frank J, ed. “Herbals through 1500,” The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 90. New York: Abaris, 1984.

Grieve, Maude. A Modern Herbal. 1931. Reprint: New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

Grigson, Geoffrey. The Englishman’s Flora. 1955. Reprint: London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1987.

Gunther, Robert T., ed. The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides Translated by John Goodyer 1655. 1934. Reprint. New York: Hafner Publishing, 1968.

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Above, from left to right: The seed head of the cultivated form of teasel (Dipsacus sativus) in a bed devoted to plants used in medieval arts and crafts (2006); detail of the seed head of the teasel growing in the same bed this year; detail of the seed head of common teasel, or fuller’s teasel (D. fullonum), now in the medicinal bed.

Visitors to Bonnefont Garden are often surprised to find plants that they recognize as common weeds being carefully cultivated in the beds here. One ubiquitous weed found growing in waste places throughout this country is the common or wild teasel, Dipsacus fullonum, a plant which had various medicinal applications in the European Middle Ages. A distinct but closely related form of teasel, D. sativus, was also introduced here in colonial times, and was cultivated for use in the woolen trade. Both forms have naturalized in the United States (see the U.S.D.A. website), although the wild or common teasel, D. fullonum, is much more widespread than the cultivated variety. There is considerable confusion between the two, and sometimes seed sold as the cultivated form turns out to be the common variety.

Teasel is so called because of the use of the spiny seed heads to tease out woolen fibers before they were spun, a process known as carding, and in raising the nap of finished woolen cloth. While the conical heads of wild or common teasel (Dipsacus sylvestris) may once have been employed in wool carding (some authorities question this) and are sometimes used on a small scale by hand-spinners, they are of no use in raising nap, as the spines are too straight and weak to be effective. The curved cylindrical seed heads of the cultivated form were and are considered to be superior to any other instrument for that purpose. The hooked spines of this form “give” when they are drawn over the cloth, smoothing it rather than snagging it. In the Middle Ages, teasel heads were fitted into wooden frames. In the nineteenth century, the frames might be placed on rotating drums over which the cloth was passed. Although teasel heads began to be replaced with steel brushes in English woolen mills in Victorian times, the very finest finish, especially that of the baize used for high-quality billiard tables, is still produced with teasel.

At one time, D. sativus was considered to be a subspecies of D. fullonum, but the two are now considered to be distinct. The botanical names are somewhat misleading, as the common or wild variety is now known as Dipsacus fullonum—the teasel of the “fullers,” or cloth makers—while the specialized, historically important form used in the wool trade since the Middle Ages is known simply as Dipsacus sativus. ‘Sativus’ is the botanical epithet given to a plant known in a cultivated form that may no longer have an independent existence as a wild species. D. sativus may have been selectively bred for its useful qualities in early times.

We grow both teasels here at The Cloisters, although the common teasel is given a place in our medicinal collection and the cultivated form is grown in the bed devoted to plants used in medieval arts and crafts. This year, the plants that matured from seed sown as D. sativus in the spring of 2008 proved to be the wrong kind and we will need to obtain seeds from a reliable source for planting next spring.

More to come on the medieval medicinal uses of the wild teasel . . .

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Griffiths, Mark. The New Royal Horticultural Society Index of Garden Plants. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1992.

Mabey, Richard. Flora Brittanica. London: Chatto & Windus, 1996.

Ryder, Michael. “Fascinating Fullonum,” Circea: The Journal of the Association for Environmental Archaeology, 1993.

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Above, from left to right: Calendar page for October from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409. Pol, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France, by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1); detail of the activity for the month; detail of the zodiacal symbol Scorpio. See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

The annual cycle of cereal production that dominates the depiction of the agricultural year in the medieval calendar tradition began and ended with the sowing of seed corn. Scenes of tilling and sowing typically appear as the activity proper to October, before the arrival of the winter rains. While a plow was used to turn the earth in spring, a harrow was used to prepare the ground in autumn, as in the Très Riches Heures. The harrow was also used to cover the seed once it had been sown. In the Belles Heures, as in many other calendars, a single sower represents the month, although a harrow appears at the edge of the scene.

In The Medieval Calendar Year, Bridget Henisch notes that the sower shown in calendar scenes is always male, although a woman may be shown walking behind him with a sack. Neither do women plow, but a female might be shown guiding the horse who draws the harrow.

In her masterly description of the art of sowing seed broadcast, Dorothy Hartley emphasizes that it was highly skilled and responsible work. (Depending on the grain and the weather, sowing was done either immediately after plowing or harrowing. ) The field to be sown was measured, and the seed was measured into open sacks that were set out at each end of an open furrow. The sower then walked smoothly and steadily down the furrow, counting his steps and keeping them even for the length of the field, guiding his feet down two adjacent plow lines. He then reckoned how many steps he must take to each handful of grain he would cast. (Field workers would not have been able to write or to count above ten, so agricultural tallies were kept by reckoning in four sets of five fingers, making a score.)

If a man sowed from a basket hanging from his neck, he might sow with his right and left hand in alternation. If he used a sowing cloth or apron, he would cast with one hand only and only to one side as he went up or down the furrow. Once the rhythm that determined how many handfuls of seed would be matched to the number of steps needed to cover the ground was established, it remained constant for the whole field. However, a skilled worker might be asked to sow more thinly or thickly in different parts of the field, which might be drier or damper in one place than another. He did this not by changing the rhythm, but by taking a little larger or smaller handful of grain.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:
Hartley, Dorothy. Lost Country Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979.

Henisch, Bridget Ann. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

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Above, left: Volunteer gardener Nuala Outes befriending a mantis in Bonnefont Garden last summer; right: one of three adult mantises seen recently on the asters now blooming in Cuxa garden.

The European praying mantis is so named because of the manner in which it raises and extends its grasping forelegs before seizing its prey, suggesting an attitude of prayer. This omnivorous species was not among the beneficial insects released in the gardens this summer as part of our biological pest control program, although several mantises already inhabited Trie and Bonnefont gardens. However, the mantis population does seem to be on the rise, and no less than three of the insect predators were recently spied in Cuxa garden on a windy day, clinging to a single planting of ‘Hella Lacy,’ a cultivated form of the native New York aster now blooming along the roadsides.

The sexual cannibalism for which the mantis is notorious seems to be more common in captivity; it is less frequently and readily observed by entomologists in the field and is the subject of scholarly debate. Autumn is the mating season for praying mantises in our climate, although we haven’t observed any unions. The compound eyes and binocular vision over a wide field—characteristic of mantises—make them at least as aware of us as we are of them, and they clearly register their consciousness of our presence when we encounter them in the gardens.

—Deirdre Larkin

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Above, from left to right: Hop bines grown in Bonnefont Cloister garden send out new shoots in March, reaching the roofline by the end of May and dying back to the ground in late autumn; a hop bine bearing female flowers, called cones, adorns the abacus of a column from Saint-Guilhem Cloister; detail of a bine bearing a male flower.

Hop (Humulus lupulus) has been used as a vegetable (according to the Roman natural historian Pliny, the young shoots of the plant were eaten), as both fodder and bedding for cattle, as a dye, and, like its close relative hemp (Cannabis sativa), as a fiber plant. It also appears as a medicament in medieval and Renaissance herbals. The fifteenth-century Herbarius Latinus recommends hops for purifying the blood, opening obstructions of the spleen, easing fever, and cutting both headache and jaundice. However, the most important economic use of hops in the Middle Ages and at the present writing is in brewing beer. The bitter, aromatic principles of the hop give flavor to the brew, but they are also antimicrobial. This preservative property was well known to the twelfth-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who wrote that the bitterness of hops retards spoilage in beverages to which it has been added. [She also deplored the plant’s tendency to induce melancholy (Physica, LXI).]

In the bed below the parapet wall in Bonnefont Cloister Garden, hop bines twine themselves up hemp ropes strung from a series of metal rings set into the wooden roof beams. The bines have persisted in the same spot for more than fifteen years. They die back to the ground in winter, but vigorous new shoots emerge in early spring, reaching the roofline in a mere six or seven weeks of growth. (The name “hop” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb “hoppan,” or “to climb.” ) The plant is dioecious, i.e. the species includes indivduals of both sexes, and  male and female flowers are produced in August and September. While the plant is referred to in the singular (”hop”), the female flowers are designated as “hops.”

Pollinated female cones are no longer viable for brewing purposes, which makes the male plants a nuisance in commercial hop yards. For our educational purposes at The Cloisters, we’re happy to grow both sexes. Two years ago, we had both male and female plants in abundance, and I was somewhat mystified that no female flowers developed either last year or this year. Our bines are basically healthy and vigorous, although they do suffer damage from mites and mildews in summer, and it seemed odd that all of the female bines would have died back or been crowded out by the males, who continued to flourish.

This made me wonder: Can hops change sex? I visited an online forum for home brewers and discovered that other growers found themselves in the same situation.  One of them had consulted a commercial hop supplier who claimed that it was indeed possible for hop plants to change gender in response to stress, but according to Dr. John Henning, a plant geneticist who heads the USDA-ARS Hop Breeding & Genetics Program based at Oregon State University, this is not a scientific explanation. Dr. Henning thinks it more likely that the females of the unidentified hop strain we’re growing (our bines were acquired from a commercial herb grower who did not specify the cultivar) were more susceptible than the males to insect damage and disease. Both the male and female plants die back to the ground after the first frost, and we can’t determine whether the young shoots that emerge in spring are male or female. Only when the bines flower again in late summer can we know if both sexes have survived. Now we know that we’ll need to plant new stock, and Dr. Henning, who maintains a germplasm bank that includes many cultivated forms of hop, including antique strains that might be closer to the medieval type than modern varieties, has kindly offered to help us by providing an appropriate strain.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Andersen, Frank J. Herbals Through 1500. New York: Abaris Books, 1984.

DeLyser, D. Y. and W. J. Kasper. “Hopped Beer: The Case for Cultivation.” Economic Botany, Vol. 48 [2] (1994). New York: The New York Botanical Garden, 1994.

Throop, Priscilla, transl. Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation of Her Classic Work on Health and Healing. Rochester, VT:  Healing Arts Press, 1998.

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Turmeric (Curcuma longa), a native of India, flowering in the arcade of Bonnefont Cloister. Turmeric and other tender exotics in the collection are grown in pots.

The plant collection at The Cloisters includes a number of exotic species that would not have been grown in medieval European gardens, but whose dried roots, seeds, bark, or other parts were imported for use in food and medicine. Far from their native habitats, these plants are not hardy in our climate and must be grown in pots and removed to a greenhouse in autumn. They produce an abundance of healthy foliage but may not flower or fruit if the climate and conditions they prefer can’t be imitated. Since the limited greenhouse space available to us off site is only heated to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, it can be difficult to accommodate tropical species that prefer a warmer temperature, such as black pepper (Piper nigrum), which struggles through a winter sojourn in the greenhouse and does not always survive. Although we were very excited when our pepper set fruit last summer, the plant succumbed before we could bring it back out again this spring and the berries did not have the opportunity to ripen into peppercorns.

Members of the ginger family in the collection, such as galangal (Alpinia galanga), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), true ginger (Zingiber officinale), and turmeric (Curcuma longa) have a much easier time of it. The attractive foliage of the easily grown cardamom is maintained all year round, while both the ginger and the turmeric go dormant in early winter, putting out new shoots in the spring. Although we have grown gingers successfully for some time, I have not known them to flower. We were both pleased and surprised a few weeks ago when the turmeric put out the first of three leafless stems covered with oblong clusters of beautiful and long-lasting white and green flowers.

Unlike ginger, which is prized for its heat and strong flavor, turmeric is more valued as a colorant than as a condiment. The pigment contained in turmeric root, known as curcumin, imparts a characteristic bright-yellow color to curries, mustard pickles and preparations, and many other food products. An ancient cultigen whose wild form is not known, turmeric is believed to be indigenous to India, where the rhizomes, fresh or dried, have a long history of use as a spice and a dye, as well as a medicament for stomach ailments and catarrh.

When Marco Polo encountered turmeric in China in 1280, he described it as having both the color and flavor of saffron. While it’s true that the color is similar, turmeric neither tastes nor smells like the much more costly true saffron, Crocus sativus. (Turmeric is sold to the unwary as true saffron to this day. If it’s cheap, it’s turmeric.) Color was a very important element in courtly cuisine in the Middle Ages and turmeric may have been valued on that ground alone. I haven’t been able to document the use of turmeric as a spice, unlike ginger, which was second only to pepper as an exotic ingredient in medieval European cookery. Turmeric did have a limited place in the pharmacopeia, although it did not have as many medicinal virtues as its close relative, zedoary (Curcuma zedoaria). The fifteenth-century Hortus Sanitatis recommends that turmeric be smeared on the skin to remove morphews, i.e., leprous eruptions or other lesions.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Andersen, Frank J. Herbals Through 1500. New York: Abaris Books, 1984.

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Van Wyk, Ben-Erik. Food Plants of the World. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2005.

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Above, from left to right: Calendar page for September from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry, 1405–1408/1409. Pol, Jean, and Herman de Limbourg (Franco-Netherlandish, active in France, by 1399–1416). French; Made in Paris. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1); detail of the activity for the month; detail of the zodiacal symbol Libra. See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

Images of peasants sowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, and storing wheat in the appropriate months dominate the medieval calendar tradition—the only agricultural product that rivals wheat’s importance in the cycle of the year is the wine grape, Vitis vinifera. (For more on wine grapes and wine in the Middle Ages, see “Grapevines at The Cloisters,” March 13.). In the Belles Heures, as in many another Book of Hours, the cultivating and pruning of the vine stocks marks the return to fieldwork in early spring (see “Marching Out,” March 6). Once the grain had been brought safely in, it was time to bring in the grapes. The vintage culminates in the wine drunk at the winter feasts depicted in the months of December and January (see “Works and Days: The Medieval Year,” January 9).

In wine-growing regions, the grape harvest is the calendar activity for the month of September or October. In twelfth- and thirteenth-century calendar cycles, a single figure is often shown severing the fruit from the vine with a knife or a billhook, but this is an iconographic convention that probably derives from the personification of the season in the Roman calendar tradition. Like reaping or threshing, the grape harvest was a communal activity, as depicted in the Très Riches Heures, which was also commissioned by the Duc du Berry and painted by the Limbourg brothers. In harvest scenes like these, grapes are gathered into baskets or panniers, but the fruit would be transferred into wooden vats, like the one depicted in the Belles Heures. The grapes might then be trampled underfoot to express the juice or the juice might be extracted by means of a wooden screw press. (For information about wine pressing, see www.larsdatter.com/winepresses.htm.)

The former method was hallowed by ancient tradition; wine that had been mechanically extracted was sold as such and reaped a lower price than wine from trodden grapes.

Once the juice had been separated from the grapeskins, it was put into wooden barrels and casks for fermentation, storage, and shipment. The making of these vessels was the work of the cooper, a skilled craftsman who began the long process of making and finishing a barrel by cleaving wooden staves from the trunk of an oak (preferred, although other species could be used) rather than sawing them. If the staves were not cut properly, taking advantage of the wood’s structure, the barrels or casks would leak. (For a collection of images of medieval coopers at work, see www.larsdatter.com/coopers.htm.)

The making and repairing of the vessels to hold the wine was an important job and was itself a calendar subject for the month of August in some medieval calendars. As Bridget Henisch observes, the wine barrel is the only manufactured object to be given this honor in the calendar tradition.

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources
Henisch, Bridget Ann. The Medieval Calendar Year. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

Pérez-Higuera, Teresa. Medieval Calendars. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1997.

Husband, Timothy B. The Art of Illumination. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.

For more information on medieval viticulture and the wine trade, see Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade by Tim Unwin.

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Above, from left to right: Saint Fiacre; England, Nottingham, 15th century, Alabaster; H. 16 in. (40.6 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1925 (25.120.227), Former owner: George Grey Barnard, New York; Saint Dorothea, Detail from The Virgin Mary and Five Standing Saints above Predella Panels, 1440–1446, German; Made in Rhine Valley, Pot-metal glass, white glass, vitreous paint, silver stain; Each window 12 ft. 4 1/2 in. x 28 1/4 in. (337.2 x 71.8 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Cloisters Collection, 1937 (37.52.1-.6), See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

The feast of Saint Fiacre is celebrated on September 1 in France and in Ireland, but on August 30 in other places. One of several patron saints of gardeners, he was an Irish monk who came to France to dwell in a forest hermitage at Breuil, east of Paris. It is said that Saint Faro, bishop of Meaux, offered Fiacre as much land as he could turn in a day. Miraculously, Fiacre was able to clear enough of the forest to accommodate not only a hermitage, but also a monastery, a hospice, and an oratory dedicated to the Blessed Virgin. Although some medieval accounts say that Fiacre accomplished this miracle using only his staff, a spade or a shovel became the saint’s special attribute, and it is thus equipped that he remains a popular subject for garden statuary to this day.

The story of the miraculous clearing of land appears in one of the earliest lives of the saint, who is believed to have lived in the second half of the seventh century, although the first recorded stories of his life and works date to the ninth century. By the twelfth century, the cult of Saint Fiacre was so widespread that no less than twelve priories were dedicated to him, and he had gained a reputation for miraculous healing that drew many pilgrims to these shrines. Because his name was believed to derive from the Latin ficus or fig—a term used to describe hemorrhoids in the Middle Ages—Saint Fiacre was thought to have a special power to relieve this painful condition, but he was also invoked against many other ills, including venereal disease.

Despite the saint’s devotion to the Virgin, no women were admitted to the enclosure or to the chapel of Saint Fiacre, and many stories stress the saint’s aversion to the female sex and his refusal to admit women into his presence. In La Vie Monseigneur Saint Fiacre, a mystery play that probably dates to the end of the fourteenth century, the saint, who had already consecrated himself to a life of chastity, flees Ireland to avoid a marriage arranged by his parents. The forsaken bride pursues him to his forest hermitage in France, where Fiacre prays to God to protect him from her advances. Fiacre’s appearance is miraculously altered in answer to his prayer, and the girl believes the disguised saint’s assurances that he knows nothing of her intended bridegroom (Barbara Craig, “Saint Fiacre, Patron of Gardeners,” in Gardens of the Middle Ages, edited by Marilyn Stokstad and Jerry Stannard. Spencer Museum of Art, 1983).

In the Golden Legend, a story is told of a woman who interpreted Fiacre’s miraculous clearing of the land around his hermitage as witchcraft and reported him to the bishop, who commanded that Fiacre should cease to work until this charge could be investigated. Angered at the accusation, Fiacre sat down on a stone, which softened and became a healing stone, even as he prayed that no woman should ever enter his church without being struck ill. Females who made the attempt were miraculously discouraged; the leg of one woman who dared set her foot within the sanctuary swelled and sickened—others lost their minds or their sight. The misogyny so strongly associated with Fiacre’s name in the Middle Ages was still manifest in the seventeenth century, but seems to have been glossed over in modern times.

Fortunately for women seeking help in the garden, Fiacre is not the only garden saint represented in the collection at The Cloisters.  Saint Dorothea—a patron of gardeners and of florists whose attributes include apples and roses—is discussed in the February 6 post, “February Fill-Dyke“.

—Deirdre Larkin

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Above, left to right: Berry-bearing catchfly (Cucubalus baccifer) flowering in a shady bed in Bonnefont Garden in July; a detail from the foreground of The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle showing the catchfly in flower and fruit behind the forelegs of a hunting dog; the shiny black fruits, which give the berry-bearing catchfly its name, ripening in August.

Berry-bearing catchfly (Cucubalus baccifer) is a pretty, lax-stemmed little plant that scrambles over and through the hellebores, ferns, and other shade-loving plants growing in a small bed under the east wall of Bonnefont Garden. We would be hard put to find a home for it anywhere else in Bonnefont, which is organized by use, since we haven’t been able to document either any medieval medicinal applications or any magical or symbolic attributes associated with it. Cucubalus has also been grown in Trie garden, which is home to a collection of plants native to the meadows, woodlands, and stream banks of Europe and is intended to evoke the verdant grounds of medieval millefleurs tapestries.

The plant is a Eurasian species with a wide distribution and belongs to the Caryophyllaceae (the Pink, or Carnation) family. In Wild Flowers of Britain (London: Pan Books, 1977), Roger Phillips characterizes the berry-bearing catchfly as an introduced perennial, often grown in gardens, which has naturalized in a few places in the southeast of England. (He also remarks that the berries are much loved by birds.) Outside the gardens of The Cloisters, I’ve never seen Cucubalus grown as a garden plant in the United States, and there is no report of the plant on the United States Department of Agriculture’s database of invasive and noxious weeds, where many other medieval species introduced from Europe can be found.

How has the mysterious cucubalus entered our medieval plant list and earned a place in our gardens? On the strength of its representation in the foreground of the sixth of the Unicorn Tapestries, The Unicorn is Killed and Brought to the Castle. Berry-bearing catchfly was identified in “The Flora of the Unicorn Tapestries,” by Carol H. Alexander and E. J. Woodward, which first appeared in the Journal of the New York Botanical Garden (May–June 1941) and was reprinted as a pamphlet in 1941, 1944, and 1965. The study includes drawings with keys to the trees, herbs, and flowers of each of the seven tapestries, and was reprinted as an appendix in a more recent Museum publication by Adolfo S. Cavallo (The Unicorn Tapestries, 1998.) The tapestries are so faithful to nature and so botanically detailed that Alexander and Woodward were able to identify more than eighty of the one hundred plants represented, including Cucubalus baccifer, with its distinctive white flowers and shining black fruits.

Some of the plants identified by Alexander and Woodward appear in multiple Unicorn tapestries; a number of these—such as violets, strawberries, and daisies—are stock plants that frequently appear in the grounds of other medieval millefleurs tapestries as well. Other plants, like the Cucubalus, appear only once in the series and may even be unique to The Unicorn Tapestries, such as the early purple orchid prominently placed against the unicorn’s body in the seventh hanging, The Unicorn in Captivity. While the orchid is a plant of ancient medicinal and magical reputation and can be interpreted as having a special significance in the context of the tapestry, we do not yet know the significance of the berry-bearing catchfly, which doesn’t appear in any of the authoritative sources about the folklore, symbolism, or use of medieval species.

I have come across a few scientific studies on the medicinal properties of Cucubalus, but these seem to be based on its reputation as a folk remedy in China. Does anyone know any European use or significance for this intriguing plant?

—Deirdre Larkin

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