My hubby, along with a number of people I know, isn’t a particular fan of vegetables. He’ll eat them under sufferance because he knows they’re good for him, and because I won’t let him eat just meat, potatoes and gravy all the time. So I can only imagine his reaction to being charged a plant’s weight in gold to have some of it.
For this plant, with golden flowers, was craved by ancient cooks for its spicy flavour. It was essential for physicians for curing just about anything, and was so prized for its scent that ancient writers mentioned that frequently. And apparently it was also a potent aphrodisiac.
Julius Caesar’s treasury had stockpiles not just of gold, but of over a thousand pounds of the plant called silphion, or silphium, whose saplings alone were as valuable as silver. Roman poets and singers even sang ditties about it.
So what happened to this phenomenal plant? Why did it disappear from historical record by the early 1st century AD? At that time, Roman chronicler Pliny the Elder wrote that “Just one stalk has been found, and it has been given to the Emperor Nero.”
It was an essential item of trade from the ancient North African city of Cyrene, in what’s now Libya, and was so important to the city’s economy that an image was stamped on the back of its coins, with the king’s image on the front.
It’s a typical story, I think: over-consumption. Because according to the records, no one ever managed to cultivate the plant, and once all the specimens disappeared from the wild, that was the end. This is believed to be the first recorded extinction of any species, whether plant or animal, and a cautionary ecological tale as well. For centuries botanical explorers have hunted it unsuccessfully across three continents.
My novels cover a lot of ground through history and across fantastic dimensions, so I mine ancient history and cultures for ideas, with as much realism as I can manage. When I came across the story of silphion a while back, I knew I had the perfect ingredient for a potion that my brilliant apothecary and herbalist Elspeth Surgeoner concocts to help out the – well, let’s just say a certain special-interest group in the town of Llithfaen. She’s found a way to revive the ancient plant and cultivate it.
But no one from the Dark Ages onward has known what silphion truly looked like, apart from the odd written description and its depiction in artwork. If it hasn’t actually gone extinct, identifying it today would be challenging.
Imagine my delight when I read the news of a professor in Turkey who believes he’s found a descendant of the very plant, growing wild among the foothills of his country.
In 1983 Professor Mahmut Miski was led by two boys from a small Cappadocian village to their family farm, where several unusually tall Ferula drudeana plants (in the same family as fennel) were growing. They had thick stems that exuded an acrid resin.
Professor Miski’s field of research is pharmacognosy, the study of medicines derived from natural sources. He took an interest in this yellow-flowered species, and as time went on, began to notice several aspects of the Ferula plant which has led him to speculate that it might be the legendary ancient vegetable.
One characteristic was the aroma of its root ball, which has a highly attractive, slightly medicinal odor reminiscent of pine and eucalyptus.
Then he observed that insects attracted to the plant’s sap began to mate. This made him think of silphion’s reputed aphrodisiac properties.
There were other significant similarities, and analyses of the root extracts in his lab at the University of Istanbul have revealed a chemical bonanza of compounds, including those with contraceptive, anti-inflammatory and even cancer-fighting properties.
Research is ongoing, and the professor and his team have, with some difficulty, managed to cultivate the plant. One day, perhaps, we might all be able to taste something that was thought completely lost to the mists of ancient Greece and Rome. At the very least, it shows that my tale of Elspeth’s botanical success isn’t completely far-fetched – score one for the author! 😉 Click here for more information on my Chaos Roads trilogy.