Above, from left to right: boxwood-covered form for one of the Main Hall arches; preparing the ivy; a view of the decorated arch above the entry into the Romanesque Hall.

We have been working busily for the last few weeks preparing the holiday decorations that will deck the Museum from the first of December until the fifth of January. The decorations are made from natural materials, and all of the plant stuffs used were associated with the medieval celebration of Christmastide. This great feast embraced the twelve days between the Nativity and the Epiphany, which commemorated the visit of the Three Kings to the infant Jesus.

The wreaths and garlands on display are the work of many hands, and could not be fabricated by the Gardens staff without the help and enthusiasm of volunteers and other staff members who give up their lunch hours and their days off to help gather ivy, secure bay leaves and wheat ears to florist’s picks, and buff apples until they glow.

Because pictorial representations of medieval Christmas decorations are rare, our designs are based on evidence gleaned from carols, wassails, romances, and artworks. The medieval practice of decking churches and halls with greens for the season had its roots in ancient custom. The early Church had banned the use of evergreens because of their ties with pagan winter festivals, such as the Roman Saturnalia. By the Middle Ages, these plants had been given Christian interpretations and were used to celebrate the feast days of the Christian calendar.

The first decorations to be installed are the arches of fruits, nuts, and greenery that adorn four of the doorways in the Main Hall. Wooden forms that fit into the recesses above the arched doorways are wrapped in straw. Branches of boxwood are then inserted into the straw to give volume and provide a green ground for the other elements. Individual leaves of ivy gathered on the Museum grounds are put into florist’s water picks and inserted into the boxwood-covered form, and clusters of lady apples, rosehips, and hazelnuts are set in bosses among the ivy leaves. Lady apples—a very old variety that may well date back to Roman times—are still commonly available as a dessert apple at this time of year. The rosehips allude to the rose symbolism so prominent in medieval Christmas carols.

Both ivy and holly were associated with Christmas in the Middle Ages, but holly does not tolerate the warm, dry air in the Main Hall well. It is used elsewhere in the Museum.

Apples and nuts, stored for winter consumption, were a conspicuous part of the Christmas feast, as they are today. It was also the custom to wassail fruit and nut trees in winter, to encourage them to bear plentiful crops in the coming year. Fruits and nuts were ancient symbols of fertility that came to bear specifically Christian meanings, and they often appear in representations of the Virgin and Child.

More on the plants used to deck The Cloisters and their medieval meanings to come . . .

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Above, from left to right: Forced bulbs in coldframes at The Cloisters; Crocus chrysanthus ‘Cream Beauty’; Narcissus tazetta ‘Inbal,’ (paperwhites) in Cuxa Cloister.

Every year, by the time February approaches I have the winter doldrums and the beauty of spring is long forgotten. The days become shorter, darker, and extremely colder. It is at this time that my senses need to be reminded why I ever decided to become a gardener. Forced spring bulbs during the winter months provide that reminder wonderfully. Just when I think there is no possible way to endure another day of winter, the first pot of forced paperwhites, Narcissus tazetta, is unveiled at The Cloisters.

“Forcing” is the term used to describe the treatment of stimulating plant growth out of season, under artificial conditions. In a way, forcing speeds up the normal flowering process that nature provides. This practice is most commonly and easily done with spring bulbs. Bulbs have great capacity for food and energy storage. These energy reserves make it possible for spring bulbs to be forced to flower at any time of year. Forcing refers strictly to the process of stimulating flowering. This process is normally preceded by a chilling period, which mimics the temperatures a bulb would experience naturally during the fall and winter months. It is during this period that root development and early stem elongation occurs. This is a very important part of the process. Do not be tempted to shorten this period for convenience; it will greatly compromise the quality of the finished plant. The length and temperature of the chilling period vary with the type of bulb (twelve to fifteen weeks). The required temperature is normally 35°F to 50°F. Temperatures should not go near freezing or above 55°F. Chilling and forcing times should be supplied from your bulb source. Comprehensive bulb forcing schedules for all species can be found online.

Once root development is obvious, pots should be removed from cold storage and placed in warmth and light, where leaf and flower formation will occur. A soil temperature of 55°F to 65°F is ideal. The length of time varies with the bulb, but flower forcing normally takes two to four weeks. Grow lights or a sunny window will work. Once flower buds are formed, plants should be removed from heat and direct light to extend the bloom time. (Bryan John, The New Royal Horticultural Society Manual of Bulbs, 1995).

This year we have developed a forcing schedule that will provide us with flowers from mid-December until early spring. This year’s bulbs include the medieval species Narcissus pseudonarcissus ssp. obvallaris (daffodils), Fritillaria meleagris (checkered lilies), and Ornithogalum umbellatum (Star of Bethlehem); and the non-medieval species Narcissus tazzetta ‘Inbal’ (paperwhites), Hyacinthus orientalis ‘Festival Blue’ and ‘Festival White,’ and Crocus chrysanthus ‘Cream Beauty’ and ‘Ruby Giant’. The bulbs that require a chilling period were potted up in assorted-size plastic pots. These pots were grouped by species and placed in coldframes that were covered with twelve inches of perlite. The perlite serves as insulation to prevent freezing. The pots will be dug out at different times, depending on the required chilling. A map of the precise location of each pot in the coldframe is created. Once chilling is completed, we bring the pots inside where they are placed under high-pressure sodium light bulbs. The soil temperature is between 60°F and 65°F. Once the flower buds have formed, the plants are placed in terra rossa clay pots and the soil is covered with moss. At this point the plants are ready to go on display and contribute to the famous beauty of The Cloisters.

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Left: Medlar in fruit below the west wall of Bonnefont Cloister Garden; right: a medlar tree in a detail from the tapestry The Unicorn is Found. Learn more about the Unicorn tapestries.

Well into November, long after other autumnal fruits have fallen to the ground, the small greenish-brown fruits of the medlar tree (Mespilus germanica) cling to its crooked boughs. The fruit is not harvested until the leaves fall, when the medlars can be easily plucked, although they are still too hard and acerbic to be eaten out of hand. Experts differ as to whether exposure to a few degrees of frost, which does the fruit no harm, is important to the long ripening process to come. Once gathered, the fruits are placed stem-side down in straw and stored in a cool, dark place for several weeks until they are rotten-ripe and the pulp has turned into a delicious mush—a process known as bletting. (Lee Reich, Uncommon Fruits Worthy of Attention, 1992). 

Medlars begin to bear at an early age, and the three small medlar trees planted below the east wall of Bonnefont Cloister Garden three years ago now boast a few dozen fruits. The kind grown here is ‘Nottingham,’ reputed to be the tastiest of several available cultivars. We plan to blet our little crop in straw and enjoy them in the simplest way, just by sucking the softened pulp from the skins, savoring the distinctive taste, which is something like a spicy apple butter, and spitting out the five large pips. Medlars also make excellent jellies and tarts.

A familiar orchard fruit throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, the medlar is even less well-known in this country than its relative the quince. Like apples and pears, quinces and medlars are members of the Maloideae, a subfamily of the Rosaceae, or rose, family.

Despite the species name germanicus, the medlar is native to Asia Minor and to southeastern Europe; it is thought to have been brought to Germany by the Romans, and is now widely naturalized throughout central and northern Europe. It is one of several kinds of fruit trees shown growing in the monastic orchard-cemetery on the plan of St. Gall, and is listed in a  ninth-century edict, the Capitulare de villis, in which the emperor Charlemagne decreed which plants were to be grown on the imperial estates.

The tenth-century Saxon grammarian Aelfric translated the Latin mespilus as “openaers,” and that rude Old English name was still in use in Chaucer’s day:

But if I fare as dooth an open-ers
That ilke fruit is ever lenger the wers
Til it be roten in mullock or in straw
We olde men, I drede, so fare we:
Til we be roten, kan we nat be rype;

Translation:
Unless I fare as does the fruit of the medlar
That same fruit continually grows worse
Until it is rotten in rubbish or in straw.
We old men, I fear, fare like that:
Until we are rotten, we can not be ripe.

From The Reeve’s Prologue, ll. 3872–3875. (Interlinear translation by L. D. Benson.)

As with many medieval food plants, the medlar had medicinal virtues.  The anatomically suggestive form was a sign of its therapeutic benefit:

Eat Medlars, if you have a looseness gotten,
They bind, and yet your urine they augment,
They have one name more fit to be forgotten,

While hard and sound they be, they be not spent,
Good Medlars are not ripe, til seeming rotten,
For meddling much with Medlars some are shent.

From Chapter 102 of The Englishman’s Doctor, Sir John Harington’s 1607 translation of the medieval Regimen Sanitatis.

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Above, left to right: Woody nightshade in fruit and flower; Mandrake in fruit; Henbane flower.

Among the plants associated with witchcraft in antiquity and the Middle Ages are a number of poisonous and narcotic species that are chemically related to one another, including the mandrakes (Mandragora officinarum and M. autumnalis), henbane, (Hyoscyamus niger), thorn apple (Datura metel) and deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna). All are members of the nightshade family, the Solanaceae.

The medicinal and psychoactive properties of these related plants derive from the tropane alkaloids that they contain: atropine, scopalamine, and hyoscyamine. These alkaloids act on the central and peripheral nervous systems by blocking the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.  They are part of the modern pharmacopoeia and are valued as anesthetics, just as the plants from which they are derived once were.  They are also employed in cases of pesticide poisoning and severe allergic reaction, and to suppress motion sickness. They are nevertheless extremely toxic.

The psychoactive properties of the nightshade family were exploited in the famous flying ointment employed by medieval witches. The risk posed by ingesting such dangerous poisons was mitigated by applying them externally to the skin and mucous membranes. Extracts of plants in the nightshade family were incorporated into a fatty base which was then rubbed on the body. Being fat-soluble, the tropane alkaloids were readily absorbed.

The earliest reference to the application of a flying ointment appears in a Latin novel of the first century, The Golden Ass of Apuleius. The hero, who is insatiably curious about magical practices, observes the witch Pamphile as she smears herself from head to toe with a salve and then flies away over the rooftops in the guise of an owl. (The modern Italian word for witch, strega, comes through the medieval striga, from the classical Latin strix, an owl.) As in the Middle Ages, the power to fly was one of the chief attributes of the witch.

Skepticism about whether witches actually flew through the air or were simply deluded into believing they had done so was sometimes expressed in earlier medieval sources such as the Canon Episcopi. More literal-minded and stereotypical accounts in which witches flew on broomsticks to Sabbaths where they engaged in obscene orgies and had sexual congress with the Devil developed over the following centuries. These accounts sometimes made reference to flying ointments; the famous fifteenth-century witch-hunter’s manual, Malleus Maleficarum, includes testimony that witches anointed themselves with the fat of unbaptized infants or those unprotected by prayer.

The action and composition of flying ointment aroused the curiosity of natural philosophers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their views anticipate those of modern scientific researchers into the nature of these preparations.  Giambattista della Porta, in his Magia Naturalis, a work of popular science published in Naples in 1558, surmised that the sensation of flight had a physiological origin, due to the inclusion of soporific plants such as nightshade. He reports that he and his fellow investigators observed a witch who offered to demonstrate the ointment’s powers.  After rubbing herself all over, she fell into a deep sleep. Once the witch was unconscious, she was given a drubbing which failed to wake her from her senseless stupor. As she returned to a waking state, she began to babble of her travels and refused to believe her observers when they insisted that she had never left the place where she had sunk into a trance, despite the evidence of the bruises they had given her.  Twentieth-century investigators using a seventeenth-century formula that included deadly nightshade, henbane, and datura claim to have experienced such wild rides as the witches had taken after rubbing their foreheads with the mixture.  (W. H. Lewis and M. P. F. Elwin-Lewis, Medical Botany, 1977.)

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Left: The powerful but beneficent vervain (Verbena officinalis) growing in the bed devoted to Plants Used in Medieval Magic in Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden; Right: Seed capsules of the sinister and poisonous thornapple (Datura metel) growing nearby.

Trefoil, vervain, John’s-wort, dill,
Hinders witches of their will,
Weel is them, that weel may
Fast upon Saint Andrew’s day.

—Traditional rhyme, put into the mouth of the gypsy Meg Merrilies by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering.

Medieval calendar practices, and the plants associated with them, were an amalgam of Greco-Roman and Celto-Germanic observances with Christian beliefs and traditions. Many folk rites performed at the thresholds between the seasons of the year were intended to avert storms, ward off diseases of cattle, and prevent the blighting of crops.  All these misfortunes were attributed to the activities of witches. The bonfires and charms associated with May Eve (the night before the feast of St. Walpurga) and Midsummer’s Eve on June 23 (the eve of the feast of St. John the Baptist) were intended to deflect such catastrophes, and to cope with the increased activities of fairies, ghosts, and witches who were abroad and especially active at those times. These periods were also believed to be propitious for divination, especially to determine who might love or marry, or who might sicken and die, in the coming year.  Plants often played a role in these prognostications.

The practice of mumming or guising (dressing up in costumes) and the custom of asking for food, drink, or alms in exchange for blessings or good will might be associated with any and all of these celebrations, including those which fell between autumn and winter, as did the feasts of All Saints, St. Martin, and St. Andrew in November, or between Christmas and the New Year.

The observance of All Hallows or All Saints Day on the first of November was extended throughout the Church by Pope Gregory IV in the ninth century, although communal feasts in remembrance of all the martyrs were instituted much earlier. The celebration of All Souls Day on November 2 was first established in the tenth century. The commemoration of the dead and the institution of prayers for the faithful departed on that date gradually came to be celebrated by the Church as a whole. These holy days coincided with the autumnal feasts of the dead common to the Germanic and Celtic peoples of pre-Christian Europe. The roots of the modern secular holiday of Halloween are found in Irish and Scottish tradition, and ultimately derive from the ancient feast of Samhain.

We now associate witches, goblins, and ghosts primarily with Halloween, but this was not the case in the Middle Ages, nor do I know of any medieval magical plants specifically associated with autumnal feasts, as they were with spring and summer festivals.  However, many species were used in both white and black magic throughout the calendar year.

The bed devoted to magical plants in Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden includes both plants used in witchcraft, like the sinister Datura metel, and protective plants, like the vervain used as an amulet against the activities of witches, demons, and fairies. The same herb is sometimes said to be both useful to witches and powerful against them—the power is in the plant, and can be used by whoever possesses it.

More on plants used in medieval magic to come . . .

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Above: Ripe quinces in late October.

The famous quince trees that grace the four beds at the center of the Bonnefont Cloister Herb Garden have grown there since the early 1950s. Although the trees are showing their age, they still bear a heavy crop—so heavy that it is necessary to thin the fruits in late summer and to prop up the aging boughs to help them to bear the weight of the fruit. The quinces are not harvested; the fruits are picked up as they fall. Closely related to apples and pears, quince (Cydonia oblonga) is a distinct species whose fruits have an irregular shape, a wooly white coat when green, a bright golden color when ripe, and a delicious perfume all their own. (Quince is the sole member of the genus Cydonia; flowering quince (Chaenomeles japonica), a shrub grown for its coral-pink flowers, does bear a small quince-like fruit, but is another species altogether.)

Quinces are said to ripen early and well enough to be eaten out of hand in warmer climates, but in northern Europe and here in the United States, they are still quite hard, dry, and astringent when they finally begin to grow golden and aromatic in the second half of October. For this reason, quinces are usually eaten cooked, not raw. Quinces have a lot of pectin, and make excellent jams and jellies. They can also be made into quince paste (membrillo in Spanish, cotognata in Italian, cotignac in French). In the Middle Ages, this stiff conserve was pressed into boxes or fancy forms, sliced, and eaten with the fingers as part of the dessert course. (Alan Davison, The Oxford Companion to Food, 1999). Nowadays quince paste is often served as an accompaniment to cheese. While the sweetened fruit may be baked in pies and tarts, there are also many savory recipes that combine quince with poultry and with meat.

Quince appears in a famous ninth-century edict, the Capitulare de villis, in which the emperor Charlemagne decreed which plants were to be grown on the imperial estates. It is one of several kinds of fruit trees shown growing in the orchard-cemetery of the monastery on the ninth-century plan of St.Gall—a very beautiful way of carrying out the idea that the monks would enter Paradise when they died.

Native to the Caucasus, quince was widely distributed throughout the Mediterranean in antiquity. The modern name of the genus comes from the ancient city of Cydonia (modern-day Khania) in Crete, where quince trees grew in abundance. The identification of the quince with the golden apples of the Hesperides was made in antiquity by the Greek botanist Theophrastus. The quince was also identified with the golden apple awarded to Aphrodite in the Judgment of Paris, and was sacred to the goddess of love and fertility. According to the ancient historian Plutarch, the Athenian lawgiver Solon directed that a bride should nibble at a quince before entering the nuptial chamber, a symbolism that was recreated in the Renaissance. (Mirella D’Ancona Levi, The Botanical Garden of the Renaissance, 1977.)

Quince has a long history of medicinal use. The ancient Greek herbalist Dioscorides, whose De Materia Medica was influential throughout the Middle Ages, recommended the fruit as a diuretic, a styptic, and an astringent; it was also used to counteract dysentery and as a poultice for inflamed breasts. (Frank Anderson, German Herbals through 1500, 1984.) The mucilage from the seed coats has humectant and emollient properties and is used today in natural cosmetics.

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Above: Stems and leaves of Ricinus communis

Widely naturalized throughout the tropics, castor bean (Ricinus communis) is commonly grown as an ornamental annual in American and European gardens, but it is also a crop plant of worldwide economic importance. In a tropical environment, the castor bean attains the status of a thirty-foot tree. Even in temperate zones, it can reach a height of fifteen feet in a single season. An ancient medicinal plant of African origin, castor bean was employed by the Egyptians as a cathartic and is among the plant remedies found in the Ebers Papyrus.  Like other members of the Spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), the plant is poisonous. Dioscorides, writing in the first century, refers to the plant by its Egyptian name, kiki, as well as its Greek and Roman names: kroton and ricinus.  The last two names derive from the Greek and Latin words for “tick,”  because of a fancied resemblance of the seed to the parasite.

Although he remarked on the plant’s purgative properties, Dioscorides considered Ricinus to be too harsh and violent for internal use. He recommended that the bruised leaves be used externally against swelling and inflammation of the eyes and skin.

The Arbor mirabilis described by the great thireenth-century Dominican theologian and natural philosopher Albertus Magnus has been identified as Ricinus communis. (Jerry Stannard, Pristina Medicamenta: Ancient and Medieval Botany, 1999.)  Castor bean was also known to the Middle Ages as Palma Christi, in reference to the large palmate leaves, but that name was also given to a species of orchid whose tubers resembled a hand.  It is not always certain which medicinal plant was meant by medieval authors. The Hortus Sanitatis, a fifteenth-century herbal, credits Palma Christi with the power to benefit the stomach, to heal ulcers and erysipelas, and to soothe the eyes, among other virtues. While some of these are similar to those which Dioscorides attributed to Ricinus, no mention is made in the medieval source of the plant’s purgative action or its dangers. (Frank Anderson, German Herbals through 1500, 1984).

The seeds of Ricinus communis are drastically purgative and very poisonous and are the source of the potent phytotoxin known as ricin.  (Ingestion of the seeds is dangerous but not necessarily fatal, as they must be chewed in order for the toxin to be released. )  Castor oil, which was used in antiquity as a lamp oil, is extracted from the seeds and has many commercial and industrial applications, as a lubricant, a biofuel, and a food and drug additive. The ricin which the raw seeds contain is eliminated in the process of extraction, and the oil is innocuous, if unpalatable. Castor oil was widely used as a mild laxative in this country as late as the mid-twentieth century, and generations of children were regularly dosed with a spoonful.

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Above, from left to right: Red bryony vine in fruit in October; Red bryony vine blooming in June; a lusterware albarello or pharmacy jar patterned with stylized bryony vines

The luxuriant foliage of the bryony vine begins to yellow and fall in September. By October all that is left are the small red berries that hang from a lacy network of slender brown stems.  Although the vine dies back to the ground in early autumn, the root is perennial and will send up new shoots in the spring. Bryonia dioica is graceful even in decline; next May the vine will quickly veil a willow trellis in Bonnefont Garden with bright green leaves and show itself to be one of the prettiest plants in the collection.

The delicacy and refinement of bryony’s tendrils and small white flowers belie the astonishing vigor of the plant, which has a massive root that can weigh several hundred pounds. The tremendous vegetable energy stored in the root means that bryony shoots can grow several inches in a day. The name of the genus derives from the Greek bryo (”I sprout.”) While the flowers and foliage appealed to medieval artists, and the wild vine was brought into medieval gardens to adorn arbors and enclosures (John Harvey, Medieval Gardens, 1981), it was the root that was used in medieval medicine and magic.

A stylized rendering of the bryony vine ornaments a number of lusterware vessels in the Museum’s collection, including two pharmacy jars of a type known as an albarello.  (The albarello pictured above was made in Islamic Spain, but similar drug jars of tin-glazed earthenware were produced in Italy by the fifteenth century. See the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History for information on maiolica.)

Red bryony (Bryonia dioica) is distinguished from the closely related white bryony (Bryonia alba) by the color of the fruit. While both species bear white flowers, the berries of white bryony are black. Bryonys, which belong to the Cucurbitaceae family and are related to cucumbers and melons, have a long history of medicinal use. However, B. alba and B. dioica species seem to have been confused by ancient and medieval herbalists. The confusion was exacerbated by references to yet another vining species, black bryony, Tamus communis, which is botanically unrelated.

According to the fifteenth-century Herbarius Latinus, bryony was employed as a purgative, a diuretic, and an abortifacient. (Frank Anderson, German Herbals to 1500, 1984.) Bryony was also included in a recipe for a medieval anesthetic preparation known as dwale, probably as a substitute for mandrake, although it does not have the narcotic properties of the latter. The fresh root, which contains an acrid juice, is a powerful irritant and cathartic. Ingestion can be fatal. Bryony root is no longer used therapeutically, except in the very dilute quantities employed in homeopathic medicine.

The magical reputation of bryony is conveyed by its common names of “English mandrake” or “false mandrake.” The large root may be either simple or forked, and bryony was substituted for the rarer and more expensive Mandragora. Like that of the true mandrake, the root was used as an aphrodisiac and in love philtres.

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Left: Anise (Pimpinella anisum) in flower, Bonnefont Herb Garden; right: Anise (Pimpinella anisum) in seed, Bonnefont Herb Garden.

Representatives of the Apiaceae family are scattered throughout all of the gardens at The Cloisters, but they are most prominent in the culinary beds of Bonnefont Herb Garden. These plants are greatly exploited for their distinct fragrances and tastes. The essential oils, created from a fairly large group of chemical constituents within the plants, are responsible for the incredibly flavorful and aromatic properties of this family. In addition, these properties help to ensure the survival of plants in this family by attracting pollinators to the flowers.

Fennel is one of the many members of the Apiaceae family at home in Bonnefont Herb Garden. Other members of this family that can be found in the medieval gardens include dill (Anethum graveolens), caraway (Carum carvi), anise (Pimpinella anisum), parsley (Petroselinum crispum), chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium), wild celery (Apium graveolens), skirret (Sium sisarum), sweet ciceley (Myrrhis odorata), asafoetida (Ferula assa-foetida), samphire (Crithmum maritimum), alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), and angelica (Angelica archangelica). The umbel inflorescence, which is a signature characteristic of this plant family, provides a strong form that holds a garden together ornamentally at all times of the year. The fennel is a prime example of this; as we allow it flower and go to seed, we take full advantage of its ornamental value well into the fall.

The Apiaceae family, also known as the Umbelliferae family, is host to roughly three hundred genera and more than three thousand species of plants. Members of this family can be found throughout the world, but are most common in temperate regions. The family has a tremendous range of habits, ranging from soft-stem annuals and biennials to hard-wood shrubs. Plants within this family are normally characterized by hollow stems and flowers that form an umbel inflorescence. An umbel is defined, botanically, as “A flat-topped or convex inflorescence with the pedicels arising more or less from a common point, like the struts of an umbrella” (J. Harris, M. Harris, Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary, 2003). This botanical characteristic was the basis for the family’s original name, Umbelliferae. The actual flowers that are clustered together to make up the umbel are characterized by a very small size, five petals, five sepals, and five stamens. The fruit that is most often produced from plants in this family is known as a schizocarp. A schizocarp is defined botanically as “a dry, indehiscent fruit which splits into separate, one-seeded carpels, or segments, at maturity (J. Harris, M. Harris, Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary, 2003).

Examples of the more commonly known Apiaceae seed crops include cumin, coriander, and anise. The anise seeds that are used so commonly for their culinary value are actually a schizocarp fruit. Another common characteristic of this family is the tap root, which is an adaptive feature of the plant that allows it to store carbohydrates. In addition, taproots have been exploited by humans for root crops. Examples of common Apiaceae root crops include carrots and parsnips.

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Above, from left to right: Fennel flourishing in Bonnefont Cloister Garden in July; Green fennel fruits ripening in late summer; Umbels of dry fennel fruits at the end of the season.

Let us not forget to honor fennel. It grows
On a strong stem and spreads its branches wide.
Its taste is sweet enough, sweet too its smell;
They say it is good for eyes whose sight is clouded,
That its seed, taken with milk from a pregnant goat,
Eases a swollen stomach and quickly loosens
Sluggish bowels.  What is more, your rasping cough
Will go if you take fennel-root mixed with wine.

—From Hortulus by Walahfrid Strabo. Translated from the Latin by Raef Payne. The Hunt Botanical Library, 1966.

The ninth-century Benedictine abbot Walahfrid Strabo was a gardener as well as a scholar and a poet.  He praises the stately and beautiful fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) growing in his monastery garden for its medicinal virtues, but fennel was also an ancient culinary herb, enjoyed both as a seasoning and a vegetable.

Indigenous to the Mediterranean, fennel was brought to England and Germany by the Romans, and to India and China by Arab traders.  The Roman natural historian Pliny, writing in the first century, cites fennel in more than twenty remedies.  All parts of the plant—roots, shoots, leaves, and seeds—have been used both as food and as medicine.

The abundant anise-flavored fennel fruits (commonly called seeds) are prized for their warm, sweet aroma, and can be used both fresh and dried. The finely divided leaves of fennel, described by Geoffrey Grigson as looking “like a tangle of green hair,” do not dry well, and are used fresh.  Fennel leaves frequently appear in ancient and medieval cookbooks: the Roman cookbook writer Apicius gives a recipe for a sauce made with fresh fennel, and a fourteenth-century Italian recipe for chicken with fennel calls for the chopped “beards” of fennel and parsley (Odile Redon et al., The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, 1998).

Fennel has a venerable reputation as a diet herb and was known to the ancient Greeks as Marathron, from the verb maraino, “to grow thin.”  In the Middle English allegorical poem Piers Plowman, mention is made of  “a farthing-worth of fennel for fasting days.”  Fennel allayed hunger, and its culinary use as an accompaniment to fish made it an important seasoning in the Lenten fare of the Middle Ages.  Fennel is often included in modern herbal teas for dieting and weight loss. Its diuretic properties had already been recognized by the Greek herbalist Dioscorides, and Renaissance writers continued to praise fennel as an excellent remedy for those who had grown fat.

The six-foot plants that flourished all summer in Bonnefont Cloister Garden have now gone to seed, but are still impressive. You won’t find them in either the medicinal or the culinary beds, but in the bed devoted to plants used in medieval magic and witchcraft.  Believed to be a powerful amulet, fennel is invoked in the famous Lacnunga, or Lay of the Nine Herbs, an eleventh-century poem that names nine sacred worts to be used against “flying venom,” the principal agent of disease in the Anglo-Saxon world view. These nine plants of power could also be used to free people or animals who had been “elf-shot” from their bewitchment.

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