Few herbs capture attention quite like the chile pepper. Vibrant, fiery, and surprisingly diverse, Capsicum annuum includes thousands of peppers ...
Blog Category
History & Traditions
This sunny, late-blooming, garden and culinary herb is The Herb Society’s spotlight herb this month—Mexican tarragon, Tagetes lucida. It is ...
When most people hear the word “herb” today, they think of flavorful additions to cooking or natural medicines. In ancient Greece, herbs were ...
Introduction
Turmeric (Curcuma longa) is an ancient and remarkably versatile spice whose vivid color, distinctive flavor, and long history of ...
Interestingly enough, I found myself gazing at an adorable little mushroom-covered tree skirt in November, of all months. Not even a jingle bell ...
Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum) is a deciduous shrub in the Solanaceae family with arching branches that can reach 10 feet in height. It produces ...
Honoring the Herbs, Flavors, and Fires of the Season
“The scent of rosemary, the smoke of sage, the whisper of bay — the old language of the ...
The autumnal equinox, which falls on September the 22nd, is a spoke in the wheel of the year — the brief pause when day and night are perfectly ...
The word conjures a variety of meanings for different people. Does it refer to superstitions? Do you see an image of a witch riding on a ...
The simple answer is they are the authors of old, often-forgotten gardening books and articles written mostly in the 19th and 20th centuries. I ...
The question often comes up regarding how people knew which plants had medicinal value and what conditions they could be used to treat. It’s ...
The monotonous grays of winter begin to break as February approaches. Just like the groundhog reminds us that winter is coming to an end, so ...
Garlic, Allium sativum, is The Herb Society’s Herb of the Month for September. This is the time to get excited about garlic if you want to grow ...
The Herb Society’s Herb of the Month for July is savory, Satureja spp. Summer savory, Satureja hortensis, is the annual version of this herb, ...
In continuing with our look at Latin used in botanical names (click here for our previous post), here are some words that are used to describe ...
“White coral bells upon a slender stalk,
Lilies of the valley dress my garden walk.
Oh, don’t you wish that you could hear them ...
(Editor’s Note: The complete article was originally published in The Herb Society of America’s The Herbarist, 1999.)
In 1967, the Potomac Unit ...
When European explorers arrived in the Americas, they were greeted by Native Peoples with a beverage that existed nowhere else in the world – ...
No History & Traditions articles at this time. Please check back soon.