Salvia rosmarinus in History and Mythology

Good day dear Hive community, I hope you are all well and you had a pleasant start to the new week! In this post, I would like to present you some pictures of a plant and would like to go into more detail about it and hope you can learn something new.

When I was outside today I was able to discover this plant which was slightly covered with snow and is also known under the name rosemary and scientifically Salvia rosmarinus. For years it was still known under the scientific name Rosmarinus officinalis and through new scientific discoveries in 2017 it was found out that it is very related to salvia and therefore it was classified to this genus in 2019. It is believed that it originally comes from the southern part of Europe and was already known in ancient times and it was already used by the Greeks or Romans and in addition to ceremonies it was also highly appreciated for its medical effect and over the centuries it was cultivated on more and more continents. In the European Middle Ages, the importance as a medicinal plant increased more and more and the people began to cultivate it on a large scale and it already had a great influence on medicine where it was used against numerous different diseases and nowadays it is widespread almost everywhere worldwide and is indispensable as a spice in the kitchen. Over time, the use as a medicinal plant became more and more popular and the people began to concentrate on the extraction of the active ingredients and it was found out what the active ingredients could have been very useful in a higher concentration and it was also started to extract fragrances from it, which were probably already known by Queen Isabella of Hungary in the 14th century, which was considered her then secret of her beauty.

Other methods of extraction were also very well known to the old alchemists who used the plant to make medicine from it and as always I would like to mention that in case of illness you should always ask your doctor for the right medicine! In ancient times it was revered as a sacred plant and in Greece it was consecrated to the goddess of love Aphrodite and it was considered a gift of the gods and yesterday I already wrote something about the birth of Venus which is known as the equivalent of Aphrodite from Roman mythology and also the rosemary is said to have emerged from the sea together with her. This is probably also linked to the fact that it was used as an aphrodisiac or beauty product at that time and it appears again and again in this context in many old writings and is very appreciated because of its rejuvenating properties. Salvia rosmarinus was often also revered as a mystical plant and it was used to decorate places and make wreaths from it or to give it to temples and it was also often used as a burn incense and it was thought that it could protect from negative influences in this way. At the end of the article, I would like to mention the ecological benefits where it is also highly appreciated that it offers some insects a great food source and it fits well in gardens that should meet an ecological benefit.

Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about nature! I captured all these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!