[Herbalist] bitter

[Kathleen Keeler]

I looked in a couple of primary sources (in translation) and don't find the
word bitter used much at all.  Herbs (I use that term to cover all plants
reported in the Period literature, not just non-woody species or
non-spices) are generally characterized as hot or cold, wet or dry.

What I did find:

Tacinium Sanitatis (Four Seasons ofthe House of Cerruti edition, 1400's):

neither rue nor wormwood nor horseradish are called bitter.  Horseradish is
"pungent"
Bitter Oranges is a category in the translation, the original said
"Cetrona" as the name of the fruit. In the text "bitter" only occurs as the
fruit's name, these oranges are "cold and moist. "

John Evelyn "Acetaria" (1699), translated as "The Grand Salad". It is a
review of salad foods and postperiod.  However, here is where he uses the
word "bitter":
Asparagus (spelled sparagus) temperately hot, moist, diuretic but..they are
sometimes, but very seldom, eaten raw with oyl and vinegar but with more
delicacy (the bitterness first exhausted) being so speedily boil'd...

He calls Succory (which is our chickory, _Chichorium intybus_) as "being
very bitter"

and "viper-grass" which is _Tragopogon_, or salsify "being laid to soak out
the bitterness, then peeled, may be eaten raw"

all kinds of other things one might put in a salad: watercress, tansy,
onioin, nettles, wood sorrel, pepper, peas, parsnips, parsely...he does not
call bitter.

Hildegard of Bingen's Physica (1150's):
Speaking of rue, she says its "good against the dry bitterness"and does not
call rue bitter

Melons "stir up bitter humors" but I don't find her calling any of the
herbs bitter.

Fuchs (Great Herbal, 1500s) provides a Temperature for every plant.
Occassionally he calls them bitter--it looks like bitter plants are hot and
dry, tho not all hot and dry plants are bitter

"Foxglove [_Digitalis_] "this plant is decidedly bitter like the gentian so
by this token it is most certainly hot and dry"
"Roses: the power fo the rose is composed of water not substance with two
other qualities, namely astringent and bitter, mixed"
I found also moth mullein (_Verbascum blattaria_), motherwort (_Leonurus
cardiaca_) _Sambucus_ no species given (an elder (berry) plant) and
_Amaranthus_ (no species given) as bitter.  There are 970 pages, there are
doubtless others.
And I didn't work with the dictionary, merely looked for "bitter" (in
Latin) so its possible that some of these say "its not bitter", tho in
general the language is straight-forward and so that's unlikely.

So, I'd suggest that bitter isn't a typical Medieval classification.

And, having made salads of greens used as salad herbs in Period, they all
seem bitter by modern standards:  I wouldn't want lots of most of them, tho
all mixed up the tastes are good.  (Dandelion, chickweed, salad burnet,
borage, purslane, lambsquarters, shepherd's purse, sorrel).

This is a partial search: things I could easily lay my hands on this
evening.  Not necessarily a good collection of sources.

Agnes