previous next

CHAP. 36.—ARTEMISIA, PARTHENIS, BOTRYS, OR AMBROSIA: FIVE REMEDIES.

Women too have even affected an ambition to give their name to plants: thus, for instance, Artemisia, the wife of King Mausolus, adopted the plant, which before was known by the name of "parthenis." There are some persons, however, who are of opinion that it received this surname from the goddess Artemis Ilithyia,1 from the fact of its being used for the cure of female complaints more particularly. It is a plant with numerous branches, like those of wormwood, but the leaves of it are larger and substantial.

There are two varieties of it; one has broader2 leaves than the other,3 which last is of a slender form, with a more diminutive leaf, and grows nowhere but in maritime districts.

Some persons again, give this name to a plant4 which grows more inland, with a single stem, extremely diminutive leaves, and numerous blossoms which open at the ripening of the grape, and the odour of which is far from unpleasant. In addition to this name, this last plant is known as "botrys" to some persons, and "ambrosia" to others:5 it grows in Cappadocia.

1 Artemis or Diana, the guardian of pregnant women.

2 Probably the Artemisia chamæmelifolia, Camomile-leaved mugwort. The A. arborescens. the Tree-wormwood is named by Littré.

3 Either the Artemisia Pontica of Linnæus, Little wormwood, or Roman wormwood, or else A. campestris of Linnæus, Field southern-wood.

4 Identified with the Artemisia camphorata of Linnæus, Camphorated mugwort.

5 Quite a different plant. See B. xxvii. c. 11.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Latin (Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, 1906)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

hide References (3 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (2):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: