Arum has its place in the first ever encyclopaedia. Known as the Naturalis Historia it was written by a Roman known as Pliny the Elder in around 77 CE. It is the only one of his works to have survived to the present day.
Pliny’s encyclopaedia spanned 40 volumes covering everything which was known about everything which was known. What makes Pliny the Elder such an amazing chap was that the entire work was written in the evenings when Pliny arrived home after his day job of administrating for the Roman Emperor. This must have involved longer hours and more stress than the average office management job does today, yet Pliny still found time and energy to spend his evenings writing and researching, creating volume after volume of his steadily growing magnus opus. What’s even more amazing is that he wrote the entire work by hand on parchment. Presumably by the light of just his oil lamps. I guess he did a bit more at the weekends but either way, his diligence is heroic and illustrates just how much more people achieved in the days before the Internet and TV.
Pliny’s encyclopaedia contained radical new concepts such as an index, it referenced its sources (a habit which was studiously ignored by most later herbals) and was written in a simple and accessible fashion to allow all to understand and benefit from its contents.
Arum has a number of entries in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia and he includes a large number of uses for the plant, drawn from a wide range of courses. The main section is in Book XXIV, Chapter 92, entitled The Aon: Thirteen Remedies. Pliny mentions here that Arum can be boiled in milk and used for cloudiness of the eyes, internal ulcerations and inflammation of the tonsils. It is recommended here for freckles, foreshadowing its use two thousand years later by the French as a skin cosmetic. Pliny quotes other sources as stating that Arum is good for difficulty in breathing and general conditions of the lungs and coughs, and restates its use as a facilitator of birth delivery for all animals. He also reaffirms the belief in Arum’s efficacy against serpents and snake bite.
Interestingly, he writes that already there is disagreement about whether Arum is one plant or many, on account of the different variations found around Europe, all quite similar but with noticeable differences. It is already known as ‘Aron’, ‘Dracunculus’ and ‘Dracontium’, and the Arum which Pliny mostly discusses is not the British Arum but the Egyptian Arum: a plant now known as Arum colocasia or Taro. This is a notable example of plant observation (along with that from Egypt) which was subsequently forgotten in the later herbals.
For more information, see the online version of Pliny’s works: http://bit.ly/Yh9Aud as well as the wiki page on his encyclopaedia at http://bit.ly/12nLyDL and a BBC podcast at http://bbc.in/dmyfUi
380–327 BCE Theophrastus, pupil of Aristotle (and both pupils of Plato), writes his Enquiry into Plants.
Arum first puts in an appearance in the early herbals and writings of Ancient Greece. It is from this time and culture that our knowledge of Arum’s herbal properties has its origins, firmly embedded within the roots of western culture. Three works by the founding figures of the great Mediterranean tradition of herbal medicine all mention Arum.
The first of these is by a student of Plato and Aristotle, named Theophrastus. Around 340 BCE he wrote his Enquiry into Plants, one of the earliest written attempts to codify the natural world and a precursor to modern botanical classification. It is also the earliest written reference we have to Arum. In his Enquiry into Plants, Theophrastus gives the first description of Arum being used as food and mentions a medicinal use: ‘The root of cuckoo-pint is also edible, and so are the leaves, if they are first boiled down in vinegar; they are sweet, and are good for fractures’.
Theophrastus was a philosophical botanist. In the style of his time, he debates whether Arum really has roots in the same way that other plants do because instead of tapering to a point, the way that ‘true roots do’, they instead get wider the deeper into the ground they go. Hence, they cannot really be ‘proper’ roots. An interesting point for discussion perhaps, but he didn’t really come up with any suggestions as to what else they might be, if not roots.
Theophrastus’ work was less a herbal as we might understand the term and more a very early work of botanical enquiry about the nature of plants. It was an attempt to understand, mostly from a philosophical viewpoint, how plants ‘worked’ and how they could be classified. Agnes Arber says in her book Herbals, ‘Aristolelian botany suffered from one serious handicap: an inadequate basis of actual fact’. She describes how Greek botany was created by philosophers who, being completely at home in the world of ideas, believed that any knowledge could be derived from thinking about ‘general principles of the world’ without any need for actual observation: ‘… it was left for workers in the apparently less promising field of medicine’ to do that. Ouch.
Perhaps there was some truth to that criticism but Theophrastus also embodied the spirit of intellectual investigation that the Greek's excelled in and in many ways set out the foundations of today's scientific worldview. He took issue with faith healing, religious authority and beliefs not based on experimentation. He ended up being known as the Father of Botany and was even the tutor of Alexander the Great, which is impressive enough in itself. But for us, his main claim to fame of course is that he was the first to put pen to paper about Arum.
Arum is included in the first ever illustrated plant guide. Made from stone.
Arum is featured what might just be the earliest plant guide ever. Dating from an incredible 3500 years ago and located in Egypt in modern day Luxor, are pictures of two Arum species carved in stone in the temple complex at Karnak. They were created by the ancient Egyptian King Thutmos III.
Thutmos III expanded the areas conquered by ancient Egypt massively and is considered by Egyptian historians to have been a military genius. He also seems to have been a keen gardner as well. He brought back from his 'conquerings' an ever growing collection of new and unusual of plants. Presumably keen to enthuse his fellow Egyptians with a love of botany and green-fingeredness, he ordered that carvings of these exotic new plants be created on the walls of the temple in the appropriately named 'Court of Flowers'. Though the garden which accompanied this temple, and in which many of these plants were grown, has never been found, the carvings are still there. They were partly to show off just what a great plant collector he was but also to show people what these new plants were. A kind of early 'spotters guide' I think.
They represent the earliest known illustration of Arum. and interestingly, two distinct species are depicted, which shows an attention to botanical details which was to appear only fleetingly over the next few thousand years.
Arum was considered important enough to carve into the temple walls because it was probably already an important food plant. This would likely be a variety of the tropical Arum usually known as Taro. It has large, starch rich roots which are a great source of carbohydrates. Just perfect for eating and completely unlike the roots of the European Arum we have here, which are small, deeply buried and filled with flesh-burning crystals. We'll look at this again when we get to the the role the European Arum has played as a food stuff.
So this is where our timeline of Arum begins. In ancient Egypt with the first guide to plants, as a picture book carved in stone 3500 years ago. Isn't Arum just amazing?
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This is the first post for the Wild Arum book. The intention here is to build up a living arum timeline, starting as far back as possible and detailing important events from ancient herbals up to modern research into Arum. Please email any suggestions to lynden @ wildarum.co.uk or contribute to the timeline on facebook. You can keep up with developments by either checking in here or at the various social media outlets:
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