Herbs in History: Purple Amaranth

Purple Amaranth Amaranthus blitum L. CONTENTS A Simple Leafy Green Horticulture Medicine The Key Decline, Confusion, Revival References

By Alain Touwaide & Emanuela Appetiti | July 2024

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A Simple Leafy Green

Amaranthus blitum L. (Amaranthaceae), commonly known as purple or livid amaranth and pigweed (Illustration 1), is a basic vegetable in the Mediterranean countries, including in Greece where it is usually cooked as a leafy green and often served as a side-dish boiled and sprinkled with lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil (Illustration 2). Whereas it is now considered a super-food, it did not always enjoy such a reputation.
 

Illustration 1: Purple amaranth (Amaranthus blitum L.)		Illustration 2a: Blēta (purple amaranth) at a market of vegetables and fruits in Greece		Illustration 2b: Blēta as a side-dish in Greece

Horticulture

In ancient Greece, purple amaranth appears in the scientific literature as blitê (blitum). The Father of Botany, Theophrastus (4^th / 3^rd cent. BCE), described it quite exactly in Historia Plantarum (Inquiry into Plants). He identified it as a plant that has only one species (7.4.1.) He described its root, which is not as “woody as that of basil” (7.2.8) and not made of “a single straight root” (7.2.7), but of “a number of roots which start directly from the top and are of a good stoutness and longer than those of orach” (7.2.7-8). He also provided a very precise description of its seed in an analysis in which he paid great attention to the position of the seeds on plants, with a very specific typology:
 

Examples of those which produce their fruit at the top of the stem are basil, leek, onion; of those which produce it rather at the sides, radish, turnip, and the like; of those which produce it in both ways, purple amaranth and orach; both of these produce it at the side as well as at the top; in fact purple amaranth has its seed in clusters, closely attached to each branch. (7.3.4).

 
This was already stated at the very beginning of the work as an almost distinctive characteristic of purple amaranth:
 

Among plants which bear [fruit] both on the top and at the sides are certain trees and certain potherbs, as purple amaranth … (1.14.12)

 
To that Theophrastus added a morphological description of the seed as “enclosed in an integument (7.3.2).
 
In a very practical way, horticultural in nature, Theophrastus also provided precise information on the best sowing time and growing of purple amaranth. The passage is worth citing for its clear indications, which announce the Old Farmer’s Almanac (7.1.2-3):
 

There are three seedtimes for all things grown in gardens, at which farmers sow the various herbs, distinguishing them by the season. One is the ‘winter’ seedtime, another the ‘summer’, and the third is that which falls between these, coming after the winter solstice. These terms, however, are given in regard not to the sowing, but to the growth and use of each kind, for the actual sowing takes place, one might almost say, at the opposite seasons. Thus, the ‘winter’ period begins after the summer solstice … and this is also called the ‘first’ period of cultivation. The second period begins after the winter solstice … in which farmers scatter or plant the seed of leeks, celery, long onion, orach. The third period, which is called the ‘summer’ period … in this are sown cucumber, gourd, purple amaranth, basil, purslane, savory.

 
This calendar information is followed by precise data resulting from a close comparative observation of the growing process of different species. Again, it is worth citing it literally (7.1.3):
 

Not all herbs germinate within the same time, but some are quicker, others slower, namely those which germinate with difficulty. The speediest are basil, purple amaranth, rocket, and of those sown for winter use, radish …

 
These horticultural data are followed by interesting climatic and environmental considerations of a striking modernity (7.1.3-6):
 

Generally speaking, the herbs sown at more than one season do not mature faster in the summer … the season and the state of the atmosphere do not contribute at all to quicker growth, and, when there is an unfavourable cold season and the atmosphere is cloudy, these conditions do not tend to make growth slower … There is another element that makes a difference as to the growing of the various herbs: germination begins earlier in sunny places which have an even temperature.
 
As a matter of fact, to speak roundly, the causes of such differences must be found in several different circumstances: in the seeds themselves, in the ground, in the state of the atmosphere, and in the season at which each is sown, according as it is stormy or fair.
 
However, it is a point for consideration with which herbs the time of sowing makes a difference and with which it makes none … Another thing which makes a difference as to the rapidity with which the seeds germinate is the age of the seeds, for some herbs come up quicker from fresh seed … and some come up quicker from old seed …

 
Purple amaranth has been incorrectly associated with the goddess Artemis because of an overlapping of generic names and plant species to which we return below. In Antiquity, Artemis was the goddess of fertility and birth. Amaranthus has been considered to best represent these concepts, and by way of consequence, immortality, whereas this is what another plant does: a species of a genus that is not Amaranthus, but Helichrysum. This incorrect identification was probably caused by a confusion that might go back to no less than Carl Linnaeus himself, as we will show.
 

Medicine

Strangely, neither this mythological valorization, nor the exact botanico-horticultural knowledge of purple amaranth are matched by an equivalent medico-therapeutic knowledge.
 
If purple amaranth does appear in some of the treatises that make up the so-called Corpus Hippocraticum (5^th cent. BCE to 2^nd cent. CE), it is only in a very limited number of passages (no more than 6, which is extremely low), with information that is fundamentally dietetic more than therapeutic, with one exception. These passages are the following, in chronological order, with their content:
 

Diseases of Women II (196) dating to the years 450 BCE ca., where purple amaranth is prescribed in combination with plantain as a pessary made of wool imbued with oil in the cases of excessive menstruation. No theoretical explanation is provided. However, based on the other uses of purple amaranth, it may be speculated that the plant was used as an emollient to compensate for possible local secondary discomfort.
 
Regimen (II.54 and III.75), compiled ca. 410-400 BCE, specifies that purple amaranth is cathartic and can be used to treat cases of excessive alimentation.
 
Internal Affections (41. And 43), of the years 400-390 BCE ca., states that purple amaranth is administered to release the digestive system, and after a purgation.

 
In the Greek world of the 1^st century CE, Dioscorides mentioned purple amaranth in De materia medica. However, whereas he allmost always lists the medical conditions for which treatment the materia medica under study are prescribed, he limited himself to barely more than the following line about purple amaranth:
 
            It is used as a vegetable. It is good for the belly, without having, however, any remedial    property (2.117).
 
In spite of this, purple amaranth is represented in some of the illustrated manuscripts that transmitted the Greek text of Dioscorides, De materia medica (Illustrations 3-6). Representations echo the good horticultural knowledge as attested by Theophrastus in a striking contradiction with the low status of the plant in medicine.
 

Illustration 3: Manuscript Naples, National Library, ex Vindob. gr. 1, f. 32 recto, the plant on the left (7th cent., Southern Italy [?])		Illustration 4: Manuscript New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 652, f. 27 verso (10th cent., Constantinople)
Illustration 5: Manuscript Padua, Library of the Seminary, 194, f. 32 recto (14th cent. Constantinople)		Illustration 6: Manuscript Vatican Library, Chisianus graecus F VII 159, f. 44 recto (15th cent., Constantinople

 

The Key

Dioscorides’ Latin contemporary Pliny (23/34-79 CE) devoted a certain number of entries of his encyclopedia to purple amaranth. In his Naturalis Historia (Natural History), he first echoed the good knowledge of the plant that came from the Greek world. He repeated the botanico-horticultural data of Theophrastus, with the following: purple amaranth has only one species (19.123); its root is not vertical but made of multiple radicels (19.99); its seed is oblong (19. 119); and it grows rapidly (19.117).
 
Further on, in Book 20, he provides the key of what seems to be a contradiction on the basis of Dioscorides’ affimration according to which purple amaranth has no medico-therapeutic applications (20.252):
 

Blitum (purple amaranth) seems to be an inactive plant, without taste or any clear quality, for which reason in [the comedies by the Greek dramatist] Menander [342/1-ca. 290 BCE], husbands use its name as a term of mockery for their wives.

 
After this surprising statement, he went on with some medical information:
 

Blitum is injurious to the stomach. It so disturbs the bowels as to cause diarrhea in some people.
 
It is said however to be good for scorpion stings when drunk with wine, for corn on the feet when applied in a liniment, and also, with, oil, for diseases of the spleen and for pain in the temples. Used as a food it is thought by Hippocrates to check menstruation.

 
If we return to ancient literature armed bearing in mind the derogatory use of purple amaranth’s name, we discover that the plant did not enjoy a good reputation in Antiquity. In his comedy Pseudolus, the Latin Titus Maccius Plautus (ca. 254 –184 BCE) commonly known as Plautus, staged indeed a scene where the chief slave Pseudolus (who gave its name to the comedy) complains about hiring a cook (805-828):
 

… when folks come to hire a cook, not a soul looks for the best and most expensive: instead, they hire the cheapest … I am a man who seasons a dinner differently than other cooks who season whole plantations and put them on the platters and make oxen out of guests, pile on the fodder, and then proceed to season that fodder with more fodder. They serve them sorrel, cabbage, blitum [= purple amaranth], spinach, flavoured with coriander,     fennel, garlic, parsley, pour in a pound of assafoetida, grate in murderous mustard that makes the graters’ eyes ooze out before they have it grated. When these chaps season the dinners that they come and cook, they use for seasoning no-seasonings ...

 
This negative approach probably reflects a lack of interest in basic staple foods, particularly leafy greens without characteristics that catch the eye and suggest health benefits.
 
For once, however, the omniscient Galen (129-after [?] 216 CE) who is so critical about everything, did not echo this possible negative a-priori and defined the health benefits of purple amaranthus as follows, in a paragraph that is unusually short, but nevertheless exempt of ambiguity (Simple medicines 6.2.8):
 

Purple amaranth is a comestible vegetable, humid and cold at the second degre in the composition [of its qualities], typical of the beneficial [plants].

 

Decline, Confusion, Revival

In the New World, species of the genus Amaranthus had a very different history. They can be traced in South America as far back as 7,000 or even 8,000 years ago, with a domestication possibly ca. 6,000 years ago. Whereas other crops were used for alimentary purposes, Amaranthus grain was reserved for ceremonial uses.
 

From its center of domestication, the South American species moved northward to Central and Northern America. Interestingly, they also appear in Southeast Asia and China. Whereas it was believed until recently that Amaranthus had two centers of origin (the Americas and Asia), there currently is a growing opinion that there might have been only one such center in the Americas and also pre-Columbian transoceanic sea navigation that allowed to introduce the genus Amaranthus to Asia in a first wave of world globalization.
 
In the 16^th century, the history of the amaranth dramatically changed. With the conquest of Central and South America by the Spanish troops in the 16th century, cultivation sharply declined in the New World. The American species were introduced into Europe and Africa, with different outcomes.
 
In Africa, Amaranthus species became a staple food, not as a grain cultivar like in the New World, but as a leafy green, exactly like purple amaranth in Antiquity. It might be that this similarity in the use resulted from the continuity of an old tradition going as far back as Antiquity, rather than from introduction ex nihilo following the Great Discoveries. If so, this case of reactivation of an ancient use would not be unique since there are other plants that went through ups and downs provoked by the undulating movements of history, rather than by sudden introduction and supposed innovation.
 

Illustration 7: Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium.Basel: Ysengrin, 1542, p. 174: Blitum

In Europe, the Amaranthus species imported from the New World were not cultivated as a staple grain and did not even generate much interest. The chapter on Blitum in De Historia Stirpium (Research on Medicinal Plants) by the German physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566) is revealing. Just like in the manuscripts of Dioscorides’ text in Greek, it offers an illustration that is pretty naturalistic (Illustration 7). However, the text is just an assemblage of all the fragments quoted above, in addition to their interpretation by contemporary scholars (p. 173). Furthermore, Fuchs recognized that he does not know well the plant but is open to modifying his chapter if he comes across new, relevant information.
 
The subsequent history generated confusion. In Species Plantarum (1753), vol. 2, pp. 989-991, Carl von Linnaeus (1707-1778) described the genus Amaranthus. Its generic name is rooted in the Greek phytonym amarantos (adapted into Latin as amarantus), which appears in Dioscorides, De materia medica (4.57).There, it is a synonym of the name elichruson (adapted into Latin as helichrysum), which identifies species of the genus Helichrysum. Whereas Renaissance medico-botanists used the term Amarantus as per its exact Greek form for species that are now in the genus Helichrysum, Linnaeus used this name for the plants under consideration here and he transformed it by writing it with -th-. This orthography has no imperative morphological or other reasons; it might be that it aimed to stress the fact that the Amaranthus genus was different from the plants for which amarantos was a synonym, that is, species in the Helichrysum genus.
 
Returning to the Amaranthus genus, Linnaeus listed and described 11 species, including A. lividus (species no. 4) and A. Blitum [sic] (no. 6). In current taxonomy, Amaranthus lividus L. is a synonym of Amaranthus blitum subsp. oleraceus.
 
The overlapping of the Linnean genus Amaranthus and the Greek synonymy amarantos for elichruson provoked confusion. In ancient Greek, the term amarantos means indeed unfading, unwithering. Applied to a plant, it means that this plant is never-fading, and is in a certain sense a sign of immortality. Through this meaning, amarantos was associated with the goddess Artemis as we have mentioned. But the plant species offered to Artemis were not of the genus Amaranthus, but of that Helichrysum, commonly known as immortelle according to the exact meaning of amarantos.
 
In the last decades of the 20^th century, the status of Amaranthus changed: it certainly was not confused with Helichrysum, and it no longer was considered a low-level green leafy vegetable. In addition to being particularly environment-friendly and allowing for sustainable agriculture (amaranth is indeed drought tolerance and does not require much watering), amaranth was granted the covetted status of superfood. The days of Dioscorides’ negation of pharmaco-therapeutic value and of Plautus and Pliny’s denigration were over. Amaranth begun to be recognized as “an excellent source of high-quality protein and lipids with higher content of minerals, such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, as well as dietary fibre, than cereal grains. At the same time, it does not contain gluten protein (prolamins and glutelins), a reason for its use in gluten-free products” (Gupta et al., 1993).  
 
A remarkable history, thus, for a plant used for a long as a leafy green, with a simple, even hidden dietary use that relegated purple amaranth to the rank of an almost negligeable vegetable and allowed its name to be used to outrageously deride women in ancient Greece, whereas it offers nutritious and health-promoting qualities that are now being discovered.

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