Posts Tagged ‘nightshade’
Thursday, April 19, 2012
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
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Tags: Mandragora, Mandragora officinarum, mandrake, nightshade, Tacuinum Sanitatis, tomato
Posted in Fragrant Plants, Gardening at The Cloisters, Magical Plants | Comments (2)
Friday, March 23, 2012
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)
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Tags: alkaloid, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Dioscorides, Hildegard of Bingen, John Gerard, Mandragora, Mandragora autumnalis, Mandragora officinarum, mandrake, nightshade, Pliny
Posted in Gardening at The Cloisters, Magical Plants, Medicinal Plants | Comments (10)
Thursday, August 11, 2011
My early morning sweep of Bonnefont garden, overseen by the downy thornapple (Datura metel). Photograph by Corey Eilhardt
A quiet life has many rewards: not least of these
Is the joy that comes to him who devotes himself to the art
They knew at Paestum, and learns the ancient skill of obscene
Priapus???the joy that comes of devoting himself to a garden.
???From Hortulus by Walahfrid Strabo. Translated from the Latin by Raef Payne. The Hunt Botanical Library, 1966.
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Tags: Benedict, Benedictine, bryan_stevenson, ground ivy, internship, jasmine, monk, nightshade, nun, pear, potato beetle, spearmint, Walahfrid Strabo
Posted in Gardening at The Cloisters, Plants in Medieval Art | Comments (4)
Friday, November 7, 2008
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. Read more »
Tags: flying ointment, henbane, Hysocyamus niger, magical plant, Mandragora, mandrake, medicinal plant, nightshade, Solanaceae, Solanum dulcamara
Posted in Magical Plants, Medicinal Plants | Comments (5)