Herbs in History: Tarragon

Tarragon Artemisia dracunculus L. CONTENTS Dragons? Entering History The Classics Greek Mythology? References

By Alain Touwaide & Emanuela Appetiti | August 2024

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Dragons?

Illustration 1: Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus L.)

Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus L.) (Asteraceae), also known as French tarragon, wild tarragon, Russian tarragon, estragon (Illustration 1), has a fantastic species name in its Linnean binomial designation: dracunculus in Latin, which evokes the medieval world of dragons and imaginary terrifying beasts. Its English and French names, Little Dragon Mugwort and Herbe au Dragon, respectively, bear witness to this connection with the medieval imaginary universe.

 

Entering History

Whereas literature sometimes claims that tarragon was known in Antiquity and was used by the Hippocratic physicians in the 5^th century BCE, this is not the case. Tarragon was not among the plants used for therapeutic purposes either by the healers at the time of Hippocrates and later or in the cuisine of the ancient world. Tarragon is not native to the Mediterranean region, except Spain to the West and Turkey and the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the East, and is native, instead, to a vast region from Baltic Countries down to the Arabic Peninsula to the West, and to China to the East (Illustration 2). It is no surprise, thus, that tarragon does not appear in the botanico-medical literature before the Renaissance.
 

Illustration 2: Native distribution of A. dracunculus L. from Plants of the World online.

The first author who mentioned it is the French canonic Jean Ruel (1474-1537) , mostly known for his Latin translation of the Greek text of De materia medica by Dioscorides, first published in Paris in 1516. He did not mention tarragon in this translation—since it was not known and used in Antiquity—but in the original work on medicinal plants that he compiled on the basis of his study of Dioscorides’ text and many other ancient scientific treatises: De natura stirpium libri tres (Three books on the nature of medicinal plants), first published in Paris in 1536 and abundantly re-edited further, even after Ruel’s death.
 
The subtitle of the work is worth noting, including because it helps locate tarragon,  even though it has not dealt with in a specific entry:
 

With a particularly abundant index of all matters deserving observation in the entire work (Cum Indice omnium universi operis observatione dignorum copiosissimo).

 
Tarragon is included in the discussion in the chapter on Dracunculus, which is about Arum spp. (pp. 414-415). As Ruel puts it, the term serpentarium (serpent, snake) that designates the plant and is a translation of the Greek δρακόντιον/drakontion, was improperly used by the Romans: the stem of Arum with its vertical shape, which might possibly evoke the shape of a snake (possibly a raised cobra about to strike a victim), does not exactly correspond to any snake. He pursues the analysis, shifting to “the herb commonly called draco (dragon) that the farmers sew, which is totally different”. And here, he reports a strange horticultural saying:
 

... in a surprising way, they [the farmers] say that it grows from a linen seed introduced into a bulb of radish or squill that they plant in that way in the soil ...

 
Then, he describes tarragon and its taste as follows:
 

It is a slim herb, with a stem of a cubit long (ca. 12 inches), with a small dark seed, a narrow long leaf, bitter, that burns the tongue, whether it is the leaf or the root, with a taste of vinegar and salt. It is very much appreciated among the herbs for aromatized oils that do not require salt nor vinegar, since it has both tastes as it maintained the properties of both its parents.          

 
While the description, though brief and not much specific, does correspond to that of the stem and leaves of tarragon, the gustatory evaluation is strange. In fact, it is based on the supposed origin of tarragon, from an oily linen seed inserted in a radish and a bulb of squill, and the oily and acid/vinegarish taste of these plants, defined by Ruel as the parents of tarragon. Whatever the exactness and appropriateness of this identification, it indicates that tarragon was a cultivated herb for culinary use.
 

The Classics

Strangely, the treatise on medicinal plants traditionally considered to be the founding work of modern botanico-medical therapy, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (Notable Commentaries on the Research on Plants) by the German physician and scholar Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566) does not include tarragon.
 
It is the merit of the Belgian Rembert Dodoens (1517-1585) to have introduced tarragon into the body of medicinal plants described and studied in the medico-botanical literature of that time. In his Cruijdeboeck (Book on Herbs) first published in 1554, Dodoens introduced seveal innovations in different ways. Not only did he include north-central European plants not treated in any other work published until then, but he also broke with the tradition of writing in Latin, which was the international scientific language of this time, and wrote, indeed, his Cruijdeboeck in Flemish, even though he published subsequent editions in Latin.
 
There, Dodoens treated tarragon in a specific entry instead of touching upon it in the chapter devoted to another plant as did Ruel. Everything is significant in this entry, starting with its position in the work: it is included between the entries on rocket (Eruca sativa L.) and water cress (Nasturtium officinale L.), among the edible plants. Specifically, in a sub-group about aromatic plants with a light spicy taste, fresh, with some similarity to mustard and radish.
 
This entry is entitled Dragon. After the description of tarragon, which reproduces the one of Ruel who is explicitly cited, Dodoens specifies the season in which tarragon is of the best quality. In the section that follows, on the name of the plant, he notes that it was not described by anyone before Ruel and is thus not well known except “in some places of France and in some cities here [in Belgium] like Antwerp, Bruxelles, and Mechelen”, where it was introduced by Frenchmen. This is why the herb is called Dragon according to its French name at that time (similar to current estragon). Derived from Latin draco (dragon), it is in fact the name of several species of the genus Arum, to which tarragon was originally assimilated as we have seen with Ruel.
 
Dodoens concludes with a note on tarragon’s taste, in a brief paragraph that is the exact reproduction of Ruel’s text translated from Latin into Flemish. He expands on this, however, by adding a section on the “Properties and effects”. According to him, tarragon is good with salade and lettuce, just like rocket.
 
More than anything, Dodoens added a representation of tarragon to his text (Illustration 3), which might be the first one in the modern body of literature on medicinal and culinary plants.
 
The omniscient Italian physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501-1577), who made original work on many points, followed earlier literature here. In the 1558 Latin version of his translation of, and commentary on, Dioscorides, De materia medica, he returned to Ruel’s taxonomy, thus including tarragon among the Arum species, instead of devoting a chapter to it. Nevertheless, he started his brief analysis by noting that “Garden Dracunculus totally differs from all [Arum] species by its form”. And he first identifies tarragon by its alimentary use and its “extremely acrid taste”, then providing just two elements of botanical description: a long leaf and roots like those of grasses.
 
Skeptical as always about anything that he did not discover himself, he follows reporting a strange belief:
 

There are people who state that this plant is a creation as a display of producers and is not made by nature. They think it grows from a lineseed introduced into carved onions and put into the soil. But I would think that they failed; having experienced it myself, nothing happened.

 
As for its medicinal uses, Mattioli proceeds in a way typical of Galen (129-after [?] 216 CE):
 

... given its extreme acrimony, which very much stimulates the [taste buds] of the tongue, it can easily be inferred that it pertains to the category of plants that are strongly warming.

 
Just like Dodoens, he provided a small representation (Illustration 4) strikingly similar to that in Dodoens’ Cruijdeboeck (Illustration 3).
 

Illustration 3: Rembert Dodoens, Cruijdeboeck. Antwerpen: Jan van der Loe, 1554, page 775	Illustration 4: Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Commentari secundo aucti in libros sex Pedacii Diosocridis Anazarbei de medica materia. Adiectis quam plurimis plantarum, & animalium imaginibus ... Venetiiis: Ex Officina Erasmiana, Vincentii Valgrisii, 1558, page 323

In the subsequent editions, Mattioli repeated the information of the 1558 Latin version, limiting himself to provide a larger, full-page representation in 1565 (Illustration 5). Contrary to his statement about these large illustrations—allegedly made from nature—this image of tarragon is nothing more than an expanded version of the small 1568 image. In the 1570 edition, he even returned to the small 1558 representation (Illustration 6).
 

Illustration 5: Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Commentari in sex libros Pedacii Diosocridis Anazarbei de Medica materia iam denuo ab ipso auctore recogniti, et locis plus mille aucti. Adiectis magnis, ac novis plantarum, ac animalium Iconibus ... Venetiiis: Ex Officina Valgrisiana, 1565, page 593	Illustration 6: Dodoens, Stirpium Historiae Pemptades Sex, sive Libri XXX. Antverpiae: Ex Officina Christophori Plantini, 1583, page 697

More original work came again from Dodoens, in the Latin version of his Cruijdeboeck originally published in Flemish. In the 1583 edition, he provides a full description:
 

Of the herb called Dragon, the leaves are long and thin, dark green, larger and longer than those of hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis L.); thin and rounded stems, of one cubit (ca. 12 inch.) or more, around which [there are] smaller rounded thin twigs, from which hang small flowers never fully open, mixed with dark yellow; a root that extends like that of thin grasses, which germinates and propagates the plant.

 
Dealing with the growth and propagation of tarragon, he reports Ruel’s statement about the grafting of a linenseed into a radish or squill, and also Mattioli’s reference to a failed experiment. More realistically, he notes that the plant grows in orchards, that it is green all Summer until well into the Autumn, and that it flourishes in July.
 

Greek Mythology?

Dodoens’ Cruijdeboeck was translated into English in a revised version by John Gerard (1545-1612). This is the famous Herbal or Generall Historie of Plantes, first published in 1597 in London. The text exactly reproduces Dodoens’ entry, with some additions, however (Illustration 7).
 
One of such additions is the translation of tarragon’s organoleptic and therapeutic qualities according to Galen quaternary system of measurement of drugs properties. This was new. In the earlier literature, indeed, definition of the properties of tarragon was made in vague, subjective terms. Here, tarragon is defined as a plant “hot and dry at the third degree” in perfect Galenic style, meaning that it is rather hot. Interestingly, this is defined as the “temperature” of the plant, whereas the exact original meaning of the term is “temperament” referring to the mixture and composition of the different qualities that might be present in a materia medica and form a unique assemblage of possibly opposed qualities.
 
The second original element is the list of the names of tarragon in other languages than English: Draco in Latin, Dragoncellum in Italian, and Dragon in French.
 
The third addition to Dodoens’ text refers to an episode of the ancient Greek mythology cited without any identification of the source, in which tarragon supposedly played a crucial role:
 

It is written that, with Tarragon, which in Greek is also called πολυείδος (polueidos), Glaucus was restored to life.

 
In ancient mythology, Glaucus was a prophetic maritime divinity who rescued sailors and fishermen caught in storms. Originally a mortal, he became immortal by eating a magical plant. Gerard’s brief reference to him here implicitly identifies this magic plant as tarragon, something that does not appear anywhere in the body of Greek mythological literature. There is a mistake in Gerard’s mythological reference: the Greek term πολυείδος (polueidos) was not a phytonym (not even for tarragon), but an adjective meaning “omniscient”, which is appropriate for a prophetic divinity.
 

Illustration 7: Gerard, The Herbal or Generall Historie of Plantes. London: John Norton, 1597, page 193	Illustration 8: Dodoens, Pemptades libri sex, Antverpiae: Ex Officina Plantiniana,1616, page 709

The story appears also in the entry on tarragon in Dodoens’ 1616 edition (Illustration 8). Here, however, its veracity is put in doubt and considered “very plausibly referred to a species different from common Dracon (= tarragon)”. Though inconclusive about tarragon’s history, this entry of Dodoens provides an interesting supplementary information: the source for Glaucus’ history here was the very wise Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), who reported it in his famous Adagia (Adages), 4^th Centuria, chapter 63. There, however, no plant species is mentioned. The adagium only says “After he ate a plant, Glaucus lives in the sea”. The identification of this magic plant as tarragon is just a sign of the fascination exerted on popular imagination by unknown plants, further attested by all the beliefs about dragons and other malefic beasts supposedly linked with tarragon and its property to heal snake bites that are not attested in the literature. 

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