Timeless Tansy Tanacetum Vulgare Is Potentially Toxic
Ganymede, the Trojan youth who was abducted and conveyed by an eagle to Olympus to become cupbearer to the gods, was made immortal by a drink containing tansy. Indeed, the word “tansy” has its root in the Greek word anthanasia, meaning immortality. From this legend came the tradition of carrying the herb to lengthen one’s lifespan. Carrying the herb may lengthen one’s life, but consuming tansy could shorten it as the essential oil contains thujone, a convulsant narcotic that is toxic and potentially fatal. However, an old legend maintains that a small piece of tansy placed in your shoe will cure a persistent fever.
In the garden tansy will flourish in almost any soil. A hardy perennial, growing to four feet, with clusters of attractive yellow flowers and fernlike, strongly aromatic green leaves, it makes an engaging backdrop to blue and grey herbs such as sage. The herb’s resinous scent blends pleasantly with floral and spicy fragrances in your flower garden. It is advisable to keep tansy away from your vegetable garden however because it can be invasive with its creeping rhizomes and it appears to attract both cabbageworms and aphids. Conversely, the herb is an effective repellant to moths, ants and cockroaches and is used as a strewing herb in areas where these insects are a pest. Another common name for tansy is “ant fern”.
In the fall, dead and dying tansy will make a potassium-rich contribution to your compost heap.
North American Indians used tansy to induce abortion. The herb is potentially fatal in this role and underscores the caution against exposure to it when pregnant. The primary medicinal role of tansy is as a anthelmintic (worm expellant). Tansy, like feverfew, contains parthenolides, an ingredient which is used to prevent and alleviate migraine headaches. The herb has also been used as a carminative to aid digestion and applied externally to kill scabies, lice and fleas. The 17th-century British herbalist, Nicholas Culpeper, even advocated tansy for treating sunburn, pimples and freckles. Skin lotions containing tansy have been recommended for their cleansing and soothing qualities. It is supposed to be especially effective in combating acne. In the days when ladies desired a very white skin, a concoction of tansy steeped in buttermilk for a week was supposed to accomplish this. But then, the malodor of week old buttermilk would be enough to turn anybody pale.
Great caution should be used when considering tansy as a medicinal herb. It should only be employed under the advice and direction of a health professional.
Tansy can be used in the kitchen in very small quantities, although I would personally advise against it because of the potential toxicity. The leaves are strong tasting and peppery. The herb can add piquancy to scrambled eggs, salad dressings, cakes and cookies, but why bother when there are healthier, risk-free alternatives?
However, out of interest, here’s a recipe from a very old English cookbook:
A Tansy
Beat seven eggs, yolks and whites separately; add a pint of cream, near the same of spinach-juice, and a little tansy-juice gained by pounding in a stone mortar; a quarter of a pound of Naples biscuit, sugar to taste, a glass of white wine, and some nutmeg. Set all in a sauce-pan, just to thicken, over the fire; then put it into a dish, lined with paste, to turn out, and bake it.
Tansy is also supposedly one of the 130 herbs constituting the secret recipe – dating back to 1757 – for the liqueur, Chartreuse.
Crafters love tansy because the dried flowers and leaves make a fragrant, attractive and long-lasting addition to arrangements of everlastings – the immortality theme again. The young leaves and flowers also make an effective dye for woolens.
Bruce Burnett, has won four Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Gold awards for travel journalism. Read more of Bruce Burnett’s writing at http://www.herbalcuisine.com/
[tags]Tansy,Tanacetum Vulgare,toxic,herb[/tags]
