_Tanacetum vulgare_
_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 medieval 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.