Civilisation rests on them
Plants are everywhere, from pavement cracks to tropical forests. They provide us with oxygen, food to eat, fibres to make clothes, wood for construction and ornamentals for gardens. Indirectly, fixation of prehistoric carbon dioxide by ancient plants fuels economies. Plants have been crucial to civilisation; European culture is difficult to imagine without wheat domestication. The yew of English bows held the French at bay in the Hundred Years War and led to the now familiar two-fingered salute. Spanish and British Imperial interests in the New World rose on the back of mahogany. Powerful, plant-based psychoactive compounds enable man to encounter his gods and the action of yeast on plant sugars results in alcohol. Until about a century ago, plants were the only reliable medicines.
Mandrake is perhaps the most famous real plant around which stories have been told. The source of the mythology is the anthropoid root, whilst its chemical constituents have been used in medicines, poisons and magic potions. Scientifically, mandrake is Mandragora officinarum, a low-growing herbaceous plant in the potato family, which is naturally distributed in the eastern Mediterranean, western Asia and North Africa.
It has been used for thousands of years and rejoices in many common names, in many languages, e.g., Satan's apple, fool's apple, Satan's testicles and dragon doll. Mandrake was reputed to shriek when torn from the ground and kill whoever uprooted it. Incantations with swords and circles could protect the collector but the most common means of harvesting was to have a dog. Indeed, early mandrake pictures usually show the root with a dead dog attached. Mandrake roots with a strong human form were considered so powerful that judicial whittling could increase a root's market value dramatically.
Mandrake extracts, which contain the alkaloids hyoscyamine, scopolamine, atropine and mandragorine, have been used as narcotics, aphrodisiacs, hypnotics, hallucinogens and poisons. Dose makes the difference between a plant's ability to cure or to kill. At low doses mandrake is an effective anaesthetic, as dose increases it induces delirium and at high doses - death. Mandrake wine, an anaesthetic, was often given to those condemned to burn at the stake and, ironically, mandrake was an important component of witches' ointments.
Plants enter stories through their powers to astonish and the uses that humans have made of plants are as diverse as the stories they tell about them. Botanical myths often contain grains of scientific truth, albeit bent through the prism of human experience, history and literary invention.
This article was written by Stephen A. Harris at the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Oxford.
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