The mandrake above, which flowered in March, now bears a bumper crop of no less than twenty fruits, the largest number we’ve ever seen on a single plant here in Bonnefont garden. The fruits do not always ripen fully for us.  Photograph by Carly Still

The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.

—Song of Solomon, 7:13

Mandrakes are in the nightshade family, as are tomatoes. The round fruits of Mandragora, once known as “love apples,” ripen to a pale yellow in May, and develop a bewitching fragrance. While they look much like cherry tomatoes, their scent is entirely different. Fragrances are difficult to convey, but to my nose the fruit smells like a delicately spiced custard, scented with vanilla. (The complex and subtle aroma has been analyzed, and more than fifty-five chemical constituents were identified.)

In classical antiquity, the mandrake’s reputation as an aphrodisiac and a fertility drug was allied to its forked root, thought to resemble the human form. In biblical tradition, the peculiar and intoxicating fragrance of the fruit bears erotic associations, as in the Song of Solomon. Mandrakes gathered at the time of the spring wheat harvest, when the plants are in fruit, are mentioned as an aid to conception in the story of Rachel and Leah (Genesis 30:14–16). In Islamic tradition, the fruits of the mandrake are also believed to arouse lust, and are known as “apples of the jinn” (spirits).

Mandrake fruit was employed with caution in medieval medicine, but it was to be smelled, not consumed. According to the Tacuinum Sanitatis, smelling the fruit alleviated headache and insomnia, although it could also stupefy the senses.

For more on mandrake and its properties, see last month’s post “The Mandrakes Bloom Again,” (March 23, 2012). For a discussion of mandrake fruit in biblical tradition, and a chemical analysis of its aromatic constituents, see Fleisher and Fleisher.

Sources:

Arano, Luisa Cogliati. The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis. New York: George Braziller, 1976.

Fleisher, Alexandra and Zhenia Fleisher. “The Fragrance of Biblical Mandrake.” Economic Botany 48 (3) pp. 243–251. New York: The New York Botanical Garden, 1994.

Moldenke, Harold N. and Alma L. Moldenke. Plants of the Bible. Waltham, MA: 1952. Reprinted. New York: Dover Publications, 1986.

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A colony of lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) growing in the orchard below the south wall of Bonnefont garden.

The shining yellow flowers of lesser celandine star the grounds below Bonnefont garden in March and April, but the blossoms and the heart-shaped leaves of this spring ephemeral will disappear altogether by summer. The tuberous roots, which lie just beneath the surface of the soil, will remain dormant until the following spring. This invasive medieval species is not grown within the walls of The Cloisters, but has long been at home throughout the northeastern United States. (See the Ranunculus ficaria page of the Invasive Plant Atlas of New England website.)

A member of the buttercup family, the lesser celandine shares a common name with the botanically unrelated greater celandine, Chelidonium majus, a member of the poppy family. (For more on greater celandine, see “Swallow Wort,” May 6, 2011.)

The specific epithet “ficaria” refers to the use of the tubers in treating piles, or “figs” as they were called in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and Ranunculus ficaria  is still commonly known as “pilewort” or “figwort.” The fifteenth-century Hortus Sanitatis characterizes lesser celandine as warm and dry in nature, and recommends its use as a poultice to reduce piles and alleviate the discomfort associated with them. The great sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard affirms the efficacy of “small celandine” mixed with wine for the purpose, but concludes his account by noting that some believed that merely carrying a piece of lesser celandine on the person would effect a cure.

A number of other plants with astringent properties were used to treat hemorrhoids, and it is not always certain whether a plant identified as “ficaria” in medieval sources is Ranunculus ficaria or another species prescribed for the same condition, such as Scrophularia nodosa. Both these species have been used not only to shrink piles, but also to reduce the swellings characteristic of scrofula, a tuberculosis of the lymph glands known in the Middle Ages as the King’s Evil.

In her compendium of healing plants, Physica, Hildegard of Bingen describes “ficaria” as cold and moist, and recommends it, cooked in wine, for those who suffer from burning fevers. Although Hildegard’s translator, Patricia Throop, has rendered “ficaria” as lesser celandine, another plant altogether may be intended. We are by no means certain of the botanical identity of all the plants described in medieval medical sources.

—Deirdre Larkin

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.

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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The mandrake, credited with both medicinal and magical powers over the course of many centuries, has accumulated more lore than any other plant in the Western tradition. Above: One of a colony of five spring-blooming mandrakes in Bonnefont garden. In March, this famous member of the nightshade family produces tight clusters of short-stemmed bell-shaped flowers.

Mandrake (mandragora) is hot and a little bit watery. It grew from the same earth which formed Adam, and resembles the human a bit. Because of its similarity to the human, the influence of the devil appears in it and stays with it, more than with other plants. Thus a person’s good or bad desires are accomplished by means of it, just as happened formerly with idols he made. When mandrake is dug from the earth, it should be placed in a spring immediately, for a day and a night, so that every evil and contrary humor is expelled from it, and it has no more power for magic or phantasms.

—Hildegard of Bingen, Physica (translated by Patricia Throop)

The spring-blooming mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), the most storied of all the medieval species grown in Bonnefont garden, flowers for us in mid-March. The bee-pollinated blossoms open wide to the sun by mid-morning, but very few bees are abroad so early in the year, and cross-pollination by hand, with a fine brush, helps to ensure a good crop of round, green fruits (see image). The fruits ripen to yellow in late spring and develop a distinctive fragrance and a sweetish taste.

A native of southern Europe and the Levant, mandrake is found in open woodland, deserted fields, and stony places. Mandrakes are not widely cultivated, but they can be grown from seed in deep soil, where their large, forked taproots can be accommodated. They don’t over-winter well in wet earth, and are prone to rot. The leaves, arranged in a rosette, are small and tightly crinkled early in the season, but lengthen to a foot or more in the course of the spring, and seedlings should be set out at least two feet apart. (Our colony of five well-established mandrakes are now far too close to one another, and will have to be transplanted—a daunting enterprise.)

Although no use or significance attaches to the flowers, the fruit, the famously forked root, and even the leaves of this narcotic member of the nightshade family were used medicinally for millennia.  Some ancient and medieval authorities make a distinction between male and female mandrakes, and it isn’t always clear whether Mandragora officinarum or the closely related fall-blooming species, Mandragora autumnalis, (also grown at The Cloisters) is under discussion. 

The ancients exploited the narcotic properties of the mandrake as an anodyne, a sedative, and a soporific, and employed it against melancholy, mania, and convulsion. The Roman natural historian Pliny records both the use of mandrake as a surgical anesthetic (a piece of root was given to the patient to chew), and the ritual gathering of the plant:  the collector drew concentric rings around the mandrake with a sword that was then used to dig the root. The juice of the root bark was expressed or infused for medicinal purposes. Dioscorides prescribed a measure of mandrake juice mixed with wine as an anesthetic in surgery and cautery, a practice reiterated by Bartholomaeus Anglicus. The potentially fatal effects of an overdose were widely acknowledged. For more on the poisonous alkaloids contained in mandrake, see “The Nightshades” (November 7, 2008).

Magical powers were ascribed to mandrake from very early times. The semblance of the root to a human form, greatly exaggerated in medieval representations, was noted by both the Greeks and Romans, and contributed to mandrake’s reputation as an aphrodisiac and an aid to conception. In a scornful dismissal of mandrake’s reputed powers, the sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard disavows this fanciful resemblance and provides a succinct summary of the considerable body of legendary attributes still current in his day. The most notorious element of mandrake lore was the belief that the plant uttered a shriek, fatal to the hearer, on being torn from the earth.  The prescribed method for harvesting the root—in which a dog  tied to the mandrake pulls the plant from the ground—is frequently depicted in ancient and medieval herbals. (For a fascinating scholarly investigation of the history of this representation and the evolution of mandrake lore, see “The Mandrake Plant and Its Legend: A New Perspective,” by Anne Van Arsdall, Helmut W. Klug, and Paul Blanz.)

I’ve dug up a mandrake with some effort but no ill effects,  as documented in a scene from the movie Hidden Treasures.

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.

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

Moldenke, Harold N. and Alma L. Moldenke. Plants of the Bible. Waltham, MA: 1952. Reprinted. New York: Dover Publications, 1986.

Simoon, Frederick. Plants of Life, Plants of Death. University of Wisconsin Press. Madison: 1998.

Stannard, Jerry. Pristina Medicamenta: Ancient and Medieval Medical Botany. Ed. Katherine Stannard and Richard Kay. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1999.

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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The ‘evergray’ santolina is cold hardy in our climate, but dislikes our wet winters. We prefer to grow this aromatic herb in pots and bring it indoors in autumn. Above, left: Santolina is also known as cotton lavender, because of its dense, whitish-gray foliage and strong fragrance; Right: A santolina topiary made from a dwarf form of the species.

A compact, woody plant of dry ground and stony banks, the Mediterranean santolina (Santolina chamaecyparissus) is cold hardy in our USDA Zone 7 gardens, but dislikes wintering over in wet soil; we prefer to grow it in pots and bring it indoors in autumn. Santolina’s slender stems are densely covered with short, thick, cottony leaves. This low-growing evergray species lends itself to shaping and shearing, and was widely used as an ornamental edging plant in Renaissance knot gardens. It’s also an excellent subject for topiary work, especially the dwarf form of the species, S. chamaecyparissus ‘Nana.’

Santolina bears bright yellow, button-like flowers in summer when left untrimmed.

The leaves have a strong but delightful fragrance when brushed or bruised, but ‘cotton lavender’ isn’t related to true lavender—which is in the Labiatiae, or mint, family—but to the artemisias or wormwoods, a genus of aromatic gray-leaved plants in the daisy family, the Asteraceae. Santolina has been used as a seasoning, a stimulant, and a digestive, as well as a vermifuge.

Although modern botanists don’t assign them to the same family, medieval and Renaissance writers considered santolina to be a kind of wormwood; like the artemisias, santolina was used to expel intestinal worms. Some of these authorities considered santolina to be the feminine form of the masculine southernwood, Artemisia abrotanum. This identification derived from Dioscorides’ discussion of the plant known to him as “abrotonon.” The Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ digital collection of Renaissance herbals includes a side-by-side illustration of southernwood and santolina, as Artemisia mas and Artemisia foemina, from a sixteenth-century Spanish translation of the De Materia Medica, with commentary, by Andres de Laguna (see image). This is not the only instance in which ancient and medieval writers believed two distinct species to be the male and female forms of a single plant: cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) and the European dogwood (Cornus europaea) were paired in the same way. For more on the “male” cornus, see “Cornelian Cherry,” (August 13, 2010).

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Bown, Deni. New Encyclopedia of Herbs & Their Uses. Revised edition. New York: DK Books, 2001.

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

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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In the later Middle Ages, the leaves, stems, and flowers of this aromatic member of the mint family were used to effect cures for many ills, and provide protection from both spiritual and bodily harm. Photograph by Nathan Heavers

Libanotis which the Romans call Rosmarinus & they which plait crowns use it: the shoots are slender, about which are leaves, small, thick, and somewhat long, thin, on the inside white, but on the outside green, of a strong scent. It hath a warming facultie . . .

—Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book III: 89

It is an holy tree and with folk that hath been rightful and just gladly it groweth and thriveth. In growing it passeth not commonly in height the height of our Lord Jesu Christ while he walked as a man on earth, that is man’s height and half, as man is now; nor, after it is 33 years old, it growth not in height but waxeth in breadth and that but little. It never seareth all but if some of the aforesaid four weathers make it.

—Friar Henry Daniel, “little book of the virtues of rosemary,” ca. 1440

The two quotes above epitomize the ancient reputation of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) as a medicinal simple, and the hallowed status it came to enjoy in the later Middle Ages. Friar Henry Daniel’s famous treatise on rosemary includes medical prescriptions, horticultural advice, and sacred lore. In the introduction to the work, Daniel attributes the Latin original to a scholar of Salerno and tells us that he has rendered the “little book” into the vulgar tongue himself, word for word. He also tells us that the book was sent by the Countess of Hainault to her daughter Queen Phillipa (wife of Edward III) in the year 1338. [The reverse of the Wilton Dyptych (ca. 1395–1399, National Gallery of London) shows an enchained white hart, which was the personal emblem of Phillipa's grandson King Richard II, lying on a large rosemary, the emblem of his queen, Anne of Bohemia.]

Rosemary is not known to have grown in England before Queen Phillipa received the cuttings her mother sent along with the little book. John Harvey, a twentieth-century authority on English medieval gardens, surmised that these cuttings were entrusted to the care of Henry Daniel and first planted in the privy garden of the old palace of Westminster. Daniel warns that this Mediterranean herb must be protected in the English winter from black frost and from cold northern, eastern, and northeastern winds.

While rosemary’s introduction to England can be dated to the fourteenth century, it is not clear when it was first grown in northern Europe. Rosemary is listed in two of the three important ninth-century sources for Carolingian gardens: the Capitulare de Villis includes it as one of more than eighty other plants to be grown on the imperial estates, and a bed marked “rosmarino” appears in the small medicinal garden rendered on the St. Gall Plan, but it is not among the herbs named in the Hortulus as growing in Walahfrid Strabo’s little garden at Reichenau. (For more information on these Carolingian sources, see Medieval Gardens on the Continent.)

Although absent or uncommon on the Continent, this Mediterranean maritime plant may have been very familiar to the southern European compilers of Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius, a late classical production copied and transmitted by medieval monks. (The Bodleian Library’s collection includes an eleventh-century manuscript of the Pseudo-Apuleius from St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury that includes a depiction of rosemary: folio 21r; see image.) The Tractatus de herbis, a thirteenth-century Italian herbal in the collection of the British Library, includes a more naturalistic representation (folio 85v; see image).

The Old English Herbarium, an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Pseudo-Apuleius made about the year 1000, lists rosemary’s therapeutic properties, but that doesn’t mean that the plant was known and grown in tenth-century England. The book treats rosemary as an ordinary medicinal simple that could be pounded with lard to treat fresh wounds and whose juice was of value in treating toothache and itch. It makes no mention of the marvelous powers attributed to every part of the plant, but especially the flowers, in the later Middle Ages. Rosemary is not characterized as a “holy herb,” as Henry Daniel calls it, nor is it a powerful amulet against all manner of physical ills and spiritual dangers, as attested in the anonymous treatise On the Virtues of Rosemary. According to George R. Keiser, an authority on medieval medical and scientific texts, this popular work was probably compiled soon after Friar Daniel’s little book. It survives in many manuscripts in English, and in Latin versions which were widely circulated on the Continent. In this encomium to rosemary, the powdered flowers have not only the power to heal all manners of sickness, but to comfort and cheer the person who carries them and to make them beloved. Not only can rosemary cure snakebite, it can kill adders when placed in their holes, and a branch placed above the lintel can prevent snakes from entering a house.

By the sixteenth century, rosemary had become a common garden plant in England as well as Italy, as John Gerard attests. Once prescribed to warm the brain and strengthen the memory, the herb had become an emblem of remembrance, as proffered by Ophelia: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember” (Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V). The herbalist John Parkinson (1567–1650) notes not only that rosemary grew in every Englishwoman’s garden, but that it was commonly used as a token at both weddings and funerals. The seventeenth-century poet Robert Herrick epitomizes the plant’s significance in a single couplet simply titled “The Rosemary Branch”:

Grow for two ends, it matters not at all,
Be’t for my bridal, or my buriall.

—Deirdre Larkin

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

Harvey, John H. “Medieval Plantsmanship in England: The Culture of Rosemary.” Garden History, Vol. I, No. 1. September, 1972.

Keiser, George R. “Rosemary: Not Just for Remembrance.” in Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008.

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The trees went to anoint a king over them: and they said to the olive tree: Reign thou over us
And it answered: Can I leave my fatness, which both gods and men make use of, to come to be promoted among the trees?

—Judges 9: 8-9, Douay-Rheims Bible

Olive oil provided fuel for sanctuary lamps throughout the Mediterranean world in antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as holy oils for religious purposes. Above, left: A menorah flanked by two olive trees, as depicted in the Cervera Bible, recently on view at the Main Building. The brimming vessels  used to fill the lamp appear at the top of the menorah. Right: A fifth-century standing lamp decorated with a cross; bronze lamps of this type were common in the early Byzantine world.

The olive was held to be the first of trees in both classical and biblical antiquity, prized above even the grapevine and the fig. A gift of the goddess Athena, the sacred olive symbolized the arts of peace and prosperity; the ruthless destruction of an enemy’s olive groves in wartime was held to be sacrilegious act. The Roman natural historian Pliny, writing in the first century A.D., attests that Athena’s olive was still venerated on the Athenian acropolis in his day (Historia naturalis, XVI 239–40). Although slow to bear, the tree is very long lived, surviving for hundreds of years. (The SpiceLines blog features an illustrated post about a Spanish olive estimated to be eighteen hundred years old.)

The tree, its fruits, and the oil pressed from them are both fundamental to and emblematic of Mediterranean culture. Equated with life and prosperity, the olive provided food, medicine, a skin cleanser and cosmetic, a lubricant, and a fuel, as well as an oil for religious unction. Olives are still a crop plant of the first economic importance; major producers include Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Morocco, and the U.S. (California). Three-quarters of the world crop is produced within the European Union, mostly by Spain and Italy.

According to food historian Alan Davidson, the fruit of the wild olive, or oleaster, had been gathered by Neolithic peoples as early as 10,000 B.C. The wild tree was probably brought into cultivation in the Near East about 3000 B.C., and olive culture spread to Crete, Greece, Italy, Southern France, and Spain in the following three millennia.

The fatty berry of the olive, classified botanically as a drupe, yields oil when the fruit is pressed, but it also contains a bitter glucoside. This bitter principle must be removed from table olives, but it separates out naturally from the oil produced when the fruits are pressed.

This thirteenth-century enameled box from the Limoges region of France is thought to have once contained holy oils, such as the chrism used sacramentally in the rites of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders. The liturgical use of holy oils, including the anointing of kings, was inherited from Judaism.

The olive had healing properties of its own, but the oil was also used as a base for medicinal ointments and perfumed unguents throughout the Middle Ages. Hildegard of Bingen affirms the curative powers of the olive tree: she recommends boiling its bark and leaves and mixing the water with old fat to treat pains in the limbs, or adding  olive water to a plaster to be laid on the belly to warm a cold stomach. Although southern European sources like the Tacuinum Sanitatis praise olive oil as easily digestible, this German abbess demurs: “The oil of the fruit of this tree is not much good for eating. If eaten, it provokes nausea and makes some foods troublesome to eat” (Physica, XVI). Hildegard goes on to extol the usefulness of olive oil in many medicaments, especially when cooked with roses or violets. (For more on Hildegard of Bingen, see “Mutter Natur,” October 15, 2010.)

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Arano, Luisa Cogliati. The Medieval Health Handbook: Tacuinum Sanitatis. New York: George Braziller, 1976.

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

Hildegard von Bingen. Physica. Translated by Priscilla Throop. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998.

Leclercq, Henri. “Holy Oils.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910.

Moldenke, Harold N. and Alma L. Moldenke. Plants of the Bible. Waltham, MA: 1952. Reprinted. New York: Dover Publications, 1986.

Pliny. Natural History, Vol. IV, Books XIII–XVI. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1945, reprinted 1960.

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The evergreen bay laurel (Laurus nobilis), a symbol of victory and eternal life, is not as tender as some other Mediterranean species, but it must be grown in pots and wintered over indoors at The Cloisters. Above, left: Bay laurel topiaries like this one spend the winter in the glassed-in arcades of Cuxa cloister and return to Bonnefont herb garden in May. Right: The magnificent bay tree that flourishes at the center of Girolamo dai Libri’s Madonna and Child with Saints represents Resurrection, and is juxtaposed with the naked limbs of a dead tree.

The laurel itself is a bringer of peace, inasmuch as to hold a branch of it out even between enemy armies is a token of cessation of hostilities. With the Romans especially it is used as a harbinger of rejoicing and of victory, accompanying despatches and decorating the spears and javelins of the soldiery and adorning the generals’ rods of office. From this tree a branch is deposited in the lap of Jupiter the All-good and All-great whenever a fresh victory has brought rejoicing, and this is not because the laurel is continually green, nor yet because it is an emblem of peace, as the olive is to be preferred in both respects, but because it flourishes in the greatest beauty on Mount Parnassus, and consequently is thought to be also dear to Apollo, to whose shrine even the kings of Rome at that early date were in the custom of sending gifts and asking for oracles in return.

—Pliny, Historia Naturalis, Book XV, 133

The aromatic Laurus nobilis is the only member of its genus, but the botanical family to which it belongs, the Lauraceae, includes other trees prized both as flavorings and medicaments, such as cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylandicum) and cassia (Cinnamomum cassia). The Roman natural historian Pliny, writing in the first century, was at pains to explicate the already well-developed association of the bay laurel with victory—an association that was to be maintained throughout the Christian Middle Ages and beyond. The evergreen foliage and exuberant growth of Laurus nobilis made it a symbol of eternal life, and it is in this guise that the magnificent laurel of Girolamo dai Libri’s Madonna and Child with Saints appears.

The ancient Greek story of the transformation of a river nymph into a laurel tree was immortalized in the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 1, 452–53), a work that enjoyed great popularity in the Middle Ages. The story of Apollo’s pursuit of the unwilling Daphne has captivated poets as well as artists over many centuries, inspiring such famous interpretations as Antonio Pollaiuolo’s painting in the National Gallery and Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture in the Villa Borghese.

Pliny remarks on the symbolic significance of bay and the special favor accorded the tree by the god Apollo, but also comments on the elegant and decorative nature of the sacred laurel, which provided garlands that were hung above the thresholds of both emperors and high priests to beautify and protect their households. The tree was also extensively grown in Roman gardens.

Although Pliny claimed that this Mediterranean native flourished along with the olive in the region of the Red Sea, the laurel is not a biblical plant. The famous passage in Psalms 37:35, as rendered in the King James and English Standard versions, in which the wicked are said to flourish “like the green bay tree” is the sole mention of the laurel. The sense of the original Hebrew  is rather that of an unspecified leafy tree flourishing in its native soil, and it is now more commonly translated as such. The exceptional vigor of Laurus nobilis, as noted by the ancients, probably influenced the translators of the King James version.

Both Pliny and Dioscorides list a number of medicinal uses. Dioscorides considers it to be warming and softening in action; he recommends bathing in a decoction of “daphne” for griefs of the bladder; a poultice of the fresh leaves relieved the sting of wasps and bees; laurel might also be drunk in wine for the sting of scorpions. The juice of the leaves could be mixed with old wine and rose oil and dropped into the ears for hardness of hearing, while the bark of the tree broke kidney and bladder stones and benefited a sick liver (De Materia Medica, Book 1: 106). Pliny concurs with these therapies, but also offers a number of remedies made from the berries (Historia Naturalis , Book 23: 152–58). Wilhelmina Jashemski (1910–2008), who excavated the gardens of Pompeii and Herculaneum from 1961 until 1984, also researched the use her workmen made of local plants and determined that Pompeians still relied on boiled laurel leaves for bowel complaints, and boiled laurel berries for liver ailments, just as Pliny had recommended.

In the twelfth century, the German abbess Hildegard of Bingen maintains the virtues of this tree, which is sufficiently hardy to grow in the warmer parts of northern Europe. (Laurus nobilis is hardy to U.S.D.A. Zone 8; see zone map.)

According to Hildegard, the laurel signifies constancy. She classes the tree as hot and dry in action. While she discusses remedies using the bark and leaves—either boiled or powdered and baked in cakes—for stomach ailments, she gives far more attention to the healing properties of the berries, which may be eaten raw or pulverized and cooked in wine for fever, headache, and lung complaints. The oil expressed from the fruit could be applied, alone or mixed with the oil of juniper or box, to the limbs for gicht, an untranslatable term that covers conditions such as lumbago, rheumatism, and gout. It could also be applied to the inside of the eyes for cloudy vision (Physica, Book XV).

—Deirdre Larkin

Sources:

Baumann, Hellmut. The Greek Plant World in Myth, Art, and Literature. Translated and augmented by William T. Stearn and Eldwyth Ruth Stearn. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1993.

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

Hildegard von Bingen. Physica. Translated by Priscilla Throop. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press, 1998.

Jashemski, Wilhelmina Feester.  A Pompeian Herbal:  Ancient and Modern Medicinal Plants. Austin,TX:  University of  Texas Press, 1999.

Pliny. Natural History, Vol. IV, Books XIII–XVI. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1945, reprinted 1960.Vol. VI, Books XX–XXIII. With an English translation by W. H. S. Jones. Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1951, reprinted 1961, revised and reprinted 1969.

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The pruning of our fruit trees is undertaken in winter, when the trees are dormant. Above: One of four pollarded crab apples in need of pruning in Cuxa garden

The first important horticultural task of the New Year was the pruning of the crab apples in Cuxa cloister garth garden. (This year, the work was performed on Plough Monday, the traditional day on which farmers and workers returned to the fields after the Christmas rest. For a nineteenth-century account of the history of Plough Monday in English tradition, see Chambers’s Journal of popular literature, science and arts, Vol. 56.)

Above: Gardener Esme Webb cutting last spring’s growth. Below: The straight and rapid sucker growth engendered by last year’s cuts is taken back to the ”heads” or ”knuckles” formed by three successive years of intensive pruning. The crab apples have now been successfully transformed into pollards.

Our consulting arborist, Fran Reidy, completed the three-year phased pruning necessary to transform our crab apples into pollards last winter. The Gardens staff is now undertaking the regular winter maintenance of the dormant trees, which entails taking the last spring’s growth back to the knuckle formed by previous cuts. Next spring’s buds will break from these knuckles, which are characteristic of pollarded trees. For more about our decision to pollard these trees with Fran’s help, see “Woodswoman, Pollard That Tree,” (February 25, 2011). For pollarding as a medieval woodland management technique, see “Coppicing and Pollarding,” (March 4, 2011). For more on the month of January and the return to work after the Christmas feast, see “Works and Days: The Medieval Year,” (January 9, 2009).

—Deirdre Larkin

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Above, from left to right: Gardener Esme Webb carrying a trug of English holly; volunteer Nuala Outes putting berried holly branches into the arch over the postern gate entrance.

Visitors entering the Museum by the postern gate (the main entrance to The Cloisters) from now through the first week of January will pass under a great arch of holly, the plant most strongly associated with the medieval celebration of Christmastide. (For more on the medieval significance of this beautiful and beloved tree, see “The Holly and The Ivy,” December 18, 2008). The ceremonial placing of a beneficent plant above a doorway is an ancient practice common to many cultures and periods. (Four of the doorways in the Main Hall are adorned with arches of ivy, apples, hazelnuts, and rose hips; see “Decking the Halls: The Arches,” December 2, 2008.) The red-berried holly was given a masculine persona in the Middle Ages, in contrast to the black-fruited ivy, which was considered to be feminine. In botanical fact, holly is dioecious, and its male and female reproductive organs are borne on separate plants. There are female hollies and male hollies, but only the females bear berries.

Assistant Horticulturist Carly Still finishing off the base of the holly arch with a corbel of pine cones.

WISHING YOU PEACE, PLENTY, AND EVERY GOOD THING IN THE COMING YEAR.

—Deirdre Larkin and the staff of The Cloisters Gardens

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An Eastern black oak (Quercus velutina) outside The Cloisters.  Photograph by Theo Margelony

Its wood is strong and hard and durable. Its beams supported high roofs over castles and churches. Its boards closed off doorways and gateways, denying passage to all but the most obstinate or determined, and were used to create interior floors from small chambers to large halls. Panels of it were shaped and carved into chests and choir stalls. Its planks were worked into ships and bridges, wagons and carts. It might be coppiced or pollarded (see “Coppicing and Pollarding,” March 4, 2011) for the strong, supple whips it produced. While not edible directly, its acorns provided rich nourishment for swine as they were driven into the forest in the fall to feed and fatten on the annual bounty in time for winter (see “Pigs and Pannage,” November 13, 2009). In fields and along roads, its strong branches stretched out wide overhead to provide shade and shelter for simple farmers and noble travelers alike. It seems almost as if the great oak of the forest supported the entire medieval world.

Detail of oak trees in The Unicorn Is Found (from the Unicorn Tapestries), 1495–1505. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.2).

In heraldry, the oak is the tree and the tree is the oak. It’s seen as a symbol of strength and endurance; even its leaves display a tenacity, less easily shed in the fall than the leaves of other trees. Lesser heraldic species, such as the linden or the holly, must be mentioned by name, despite being readily recognized. A tree without any other description is always assumed to be an oak. Like most heraldic charges, the heraldic oak is depicted in an abbreviated, stylized form that makes for quick identification on shield or flag intended to be seen from a distance. A few branches of its characteristic leaves are all that need to be shown. However, those characteristic leaves are always the wavy, round-lobed ones of the pedunculate oak, Quercus robur (see image), perhaps best known to most people as the English oak. In spite of its name, it’s native to a wide stretch of Europe from the British Isles to Asia Minor, from the Caucasus to North Africa. The sharply pointed leaves of a New World oak species, such as the American red oak (Quercus rubra), unknown as it was during the birth of heraldry in the Middle Ages, are never represented. Even if they were, red oak leaves would run the risk of being mistaken for holly leaves in heraldry.

Arms of Pope Julius II, early 16th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1918 (18.70.32). The oak on this shield is eradicated, a typical heraldic convention in which the roots are exposed as if the tree had been pulled from the ground.

So recognizable are the outlines of an oak tree’s leaves in heraldry that the inclusion of the equally recognizable acorns in its branches is optional. When a heraldic tree is shown with fruit it’s described as “fructed.” The heraldic oak bearing fruit, however, in keeping with its preeminent status, is said to be “acorned.” Trees in heraldry are frequently depicted as growing from the ground, on the shield as in nature, usually either from a flat line across the base or from a rounded mount. If a tree appears to float freely on the surface of the shield, it is depicted as eradicated—a style in which the tree’s roots are visible (as if uprooted from the Earth and shaken clean) and extend out in decorative tendrils to fill what would otherwise be empty space at the bottom of the shield.

In addition to the whole tree, parts of the oak also appear in coats of arms. Oak branches are frequently seen and again, if they are fructed with acorns, they’re said to be acorned. Simple oak leaves are also common on the shield, as are its acorns. Unlike the whole oak tree, however, the identity of its parts is oddly not left to assumption and is usually specifically stated. As with many things heraldic, an oak tree, sprig, or leaf might be called “proper.” In spite of the tree’s upright reputation, the term doesn’t refer to any special propriety but rather that its heraldic color is the natural one: A “leaf proper” is vert, the heraldic term for green. Of course, other colors also occur, and heraldry has its own Red, Black, and Golden Oaks (Gules, Sable, and Or.) It even does nature one better by adding Blue, or Azure Oaks.

See the list of previous posts in my series The Garden in Heraldry.

—R. Theo Margelony, Associate Administrator, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters

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