Seona Anderson 05/08/2024 Seona Anderson 05/08/2024

SAVORY

Shakespeare Species Savory: Here’s flowers for you: hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram…these are flowers of middle summer and I think they are given to men of middle age. Perdita assigns different plants to the guests at the sheep shearing feast. Savory had medicinal and culinary uses.

Seona Anderson 20/07/2024 Seona Anderson 20/07/2024

RHUBARB

Shakespeare Species Rhubarb: What rhubarb, senna or what purgative drug would scour these English hence? Macbeth considered Rhubarb a powerful medicinal purgative rather than a delicious pudding. Some people might still agree with this assessment.

Seona Anderson 19/05/2024 Seona Anderson 19/05/2024

PLANTAIN

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, PLANTAIN: Your plantain leaf is excellent for that…Your broken shin. Plantain was and is an excellent herbal medicine for wounds and other ailments.

Seona Anderson 11/05/2024 Seona Anderson 11/05/2024

ROSEMARY

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, ROSEMARY: dry up your tears and stick your rosemary on this fair corse. Rosemary was used in funeral & marriage rites as well as in medicine and food.

Seona Anderson 06/05/2024 Seona Anderson 06/05/2024

ARABIAN GUM

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, ARABIAN GUM: drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees their medicinable gum. Gum Arabick is still used as a medicine & food additive and comes from a type of Acacia.

Seona Anderson 13/03/2024 Seona Anderson 13/03/2024

RUE

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, RUE: here in this place I’ll set a bank or rue, sour herb of grace. Rue was an important herbal medicine as well as a pun on ‘regret’.

Seona Anderson 25/02/2024 Seona Anderson 25/02/2024

BALM

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, BALM: innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care…balm of hurt minds. Balm was grown widely in Shakespearean England as a medicinal plant.

Seona Anderson 13/02/2024 Seona Anderson 13/02/2024

COLOQUINTIDA

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, COLOQUINTIDA: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. Coloquintida is a bitter gourd used medicinally.

Seona Anderson 28/01/2024 Seona Anderson 28/01/2024

MANDRAKE

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, MANDRAKE: could curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan. The Mandrake or Mandragora was a powerful medicine and poison of the ancient and early modern world and attracted many fabulous legends.

Seona Anderson 24/01/2024 Seona Anderson 24/01/2024

WORMWOOD

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, WORMWOOD: To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain and therewithal to win me. Wormwood is a herb, medicine, poison and signal of the end of days. Read more about this remarkable plant.

Seona Anderson 12/01/2024 Seona Anderson 12/01/2024

LEECH

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, LEECH: let us to France, like horse-leeches, my boys, to suck, to suck, the very blood to suck. Read about the fascinating lifecycle and medical history of Leeches.

Seona Anderson 11/11/2023 Seona Anderson 11/11/2023

POPPY

Shakespeare Species Quote of the Day, POPPY: Not poppy nor mandragora nor all the drowsy syrups of the world shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou owedst yesterday