Botanica Fabula Amanda Edmiston

Love Apples and the Devil's Shoestring

Amanda Edmiston

The silvery, silken strands of the Devil's Shoestring catch the faint hum of breeze that vibrates this dogday of summer. I'm unfamiliar with Goat’s Rue (Galega officinalis), and once we’ve identified the plant, we pick a few. Coupling them with fragrant Mugwort (Artemesia vulgaris), 'the travellers herb', we line our hot-soled shoes with the soft, green plants. Legs aching from the long walk, I had mentioned the lore that the leaves of Goat's Rue, placed in shoes, can ward off the early signs of rheumatism. To be honest, it's all I've got. I've been searching for a story about the plant for weeks now, but it just hasn't settled with me. My companion laughs. She's been delving into the world of folk names— Goat’s Rue, Italian Fitch, Catgut, Devil's Shoestrings —and, as we walk to help with my quest, she suggests we should be mindful of this herb’s reputation as an aphrodisiac. We find ourselves listing all the herbs we pass that have been connected to conjuring the carnal.

The scent of Vervain (Verbena officinalis) catches our nostrils as we make our way along the verge, and we ponder whether some of the aphrodisiac herbs have obtained their reputations from the old claims that they may increase breast milk and promote the growth of glandular tissue. A combined harvester rolls past in the adjacent field, and the aromatic coumarins— the top notes of new mown hay — overwhelm the Vervain, and the conversation quickly deteriorates into a selection of clichéd observations about boobs and rolling in the hay. We fall prey to entirely unmerited fits of the giggles, decide the sun isn't getting any cooler, thunder clouds are looming, and we should head for home.

She asks me what I do when I can't find a story about a plant, and I explain how I 'storymend'. It’s an idea that first came to me when I started sharing plant stories. I find folklore or snippets of things that sound as if they're from a story and build up the missing threads, connecting them to facts about a plant. I think of examples, and she asks me to tell her a story...

This is story mended from the European folklore surrounding another plant with a reputation as an aphrodisiac, one which, when it was first introduced, was avoided. Being of the Nightshades family, people felt it might be poisonous, and there was a bit of Northern European lore that said witches used the Love Apple (Solanum lycopersicum), the Wolf Peach, or— as we know it —the Tomato, to turn their enemies into werewolves. As we walk, I start to share my story of the Wolf Peach:

There was once a girl, a girl who lived alone with her mother in a dark, wild wood; a wood on the edge of a dark, wild town; a town torn from the bed of the river and ripped from the heart of the meadow; a town with towers taller than the trees; towers with more inhabitants than the trees that came before them, more inhabitants than the ash, or even the mighty oak itself; inhabitants dwelling like folkloric spiders in a gall wasp’s Oak Apple; spiders foretelling of shortages and tainted crops. These inhabitants were restricted by invisible chains; chains of service, chains of fear and mistrust, chains wrought when their knowledge had been wrenched from them. These inhabitants were left afraid, afraid of the wild wood and the tidal waters beyond.

Day by day, the girl watched as her mother tended the plants in her garden; a garden half tame, half wild wood. She watched and learned as her mother brewed tisanes, steamed soups, baked cakes, infused teas, chopped stews, cut herbs, and harvested plants. She watched and tasted, learned and listened. Every day, she listed to her mother every fruit and vegetable, every flower and leaf, every herb and spice, every tree and root; all the ones she loved and all the ones she didn't, all the ones that healed and all the ones that harmed, all she liked and only one she loathed— red and nightshadescented, juicy and sponge-like, textured like cut tongue, the slippery hint of antagonistic green guarding the seeds within, criss-crossed with membrane, too visceral, too sweet, its sharp acidic punch bringing bile to her throat, making her mouth water and her stomach lurch, confusing and repellent —the Wolf Peach.

Her mother had known, as the child had swollen inside her, known as her own body had reviled the shades— the Potato, the Aubergine. Tomatoes had brought heartburn, heartache, nausea and dreams; dreams of skin walkers, prowling and inflammatory. Now, as the girl grew, sought womanhood and wider knowledge, she beseeched her to try, to discover for herself its inflammatory cascade. She knew eventually, she must. But, alone in the house, the girl carefully kept the fruit to its ripening place on the mantelpiece, to repel bile and attract money— a more positive cause and effect, she felt. Eventually, the day came when, fully grown now, the men started to come to her door. They begged and promised, cajoled and insisted, beguiled and charmed, promises in hand but bags empty, and she took to handing out the loathed fruit and watching as, one by one, they bit and swallowed and howled at the moon, as they grew viscous, demanding and callous, malicious and malodorous, 'til exhausted and fearful she slammed the door. She reached for her mother's hand, held tight and did not understand her mother's eyes of sorrow, nor her disconcerting, mirthless laugh. ‘You'll get it right in the end’ her mother said, ‘you just need to trust yourself and keep watching for it’.

So, the girl watched and looked, hunting amongst the dust purple pollen of the Nightshade, that beautiful, disdainful, venomous aunt of the Tomato. She crawled wide-eyed through the evil, peanut stench of the Datura, through Hemlock and Henbane. Until she realised: the answer lay not there, but amongst the Basil and the Melissa, the Thyme and the Sage— herbs of knowledge and strength —along the Celery's conduit for paranoia, the Parsley’s trigger for tidal flow, and with the Wolf Peach itself. The more she knew, the less the suitors chapped at her door, 'til one alone stood forward, shaking his head, refusing the Tomato she offered, untill the girl stepped from inside her mother's house. And, as the moon rose and her body swelled, and the tides across the dark town drew her near, she took the Wolf Peach and its lycanthropic call and consumed it. And as the ill-minded, lurking in the shadows of the nearby woods, cursed her and withdrew, the one was left, standing, watching, arm outstretched, ready to catch her if she fell. He did not roar back as she screamed, transformed, lycanthropy complete. Instead, he knew in his heart that this wolf woman had beauty and strength to resist the darkness, to know it, engage with it, and that, with him by her side, she would take her place alongside her mother as a woman of the dark, wild wood.

As we return home and begin to make our first infusion with the Goat's Rue, I wonder if this is just a plant I need to understand a bit better. Like the eighteenth-century attitude to the Tomato, it's a perspective that will settle in time. But not yet. I'm not sure I like the taste; the words don't come. I set the tisane to one side, and we chop freshly picked Tomatoes for a salad, instead.