TANSY BITTERBUTTONS

(Tanacetum vulgare) Thistle family



Flower-heads - Small, round, of tubular florets only, packed

within a depressed involucre, and borne, in flat-topped corymbs.

Stem: 1 1/2 to 3 ft. tall, leafy. Leaves: Deeply and pinnately

cleft into narrow, toothed divisions; strong scented.

Preferred Habitat - Roadsides; commonly escaped from gardens.

Flowering Season - July-September.

Distribution - Nova Scotia, westward to Minnesota, south to

Missouri and North Carolina. Naturalized from Europe.



"In the spring time, are made with the leaves hereof newly sprung

up, and with eggs, cakes or Tansies which be pleasant in taste

and goode for the Stomache," wrote quaint old Gerarde. That these

were popular dainties in the seventeenth century we further know

through Pepys, who made a "pretty dinner" for some guests, to

wit: "A brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl

of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tansy, and two neat's

tongues, and cheese, the second." Cole's "Art of Simpling,"

published in 1656, assures maidens that tansy leaves laid to soak

in buttermilk for nine days "maketh the complexion very fair."

Tansy tea, in short, cured every ill that flesh is heir to,

according to the simple faith of mediaeval herbalists - a faith

surviving in some old women even to this day. The name is said to

be a corruption of athanasia, derived from two Greek words

meaning immortality. When some monks in reading Lucian came

across the passage where Jove, speaking of Ganymede to Mercury,

says, "Take him hence, and when he has tasted immortality let him

return to us," their literal minds inferred that this plant must

have been what Ganymede tasted, hence they named it athanasia! So

great credence having been given to its medicinal powers in

Europe, it is not strange the colonists felt they could not live

in the New World without tansy. Strong-scented pungent tufts

topped with bright yellow buttons - runaways from old gardens -

are a conspicuous feature along many a roadside leading to

colonial homesteads.