All About Thyme: October 2024

Finding More Greenspace in Your Life

October’s Special Days: A Potpourri of Celebrations

Herb of the Year for 2024.  Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Selected by the International Herb Association
Flower of the Month for October: Marigold
October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Week 1
October 1. International Coffee Day. Yes, coffee is an herb, too!
October 2-4. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Week 2
October 7. Ancient Romans celebrated Felicitas, the goddess of good luck, on this day.
October 12. National Gumbo Day.

Week 3
October 14. Indigenous Peoples Day. Columbus Day became a Federal holiday on this day in 1971. And in Canada, it’s Thanksgiving.
October 18. Today is the birthday of herbalist Nicholas Culpeper, 1616-1654.

Week 4
October 21. Watch for the next issue of Growing Green with the Zodiac, coming to your inbox as the Sun moves into Scorpio.
October 22. Yesterday was National Witch Hazel Day. And today is National Nut Day (No, not that kind—think pecans, walnuts, almonds).
October 26. National Mincemeat Day.

Week 5
October 30. National Candy Corn Day.
October 31. Halloween!

The Deadliest Herb

We found a man in a canoe going from Santa Maria to Fernandia. He had with him some dried leaves which are in high value among them, for a quantity of it was brought to me at San Salvador.—Christopher Columbus, Journal, October 15, 1492

They were looking for China—and for spices, tea, and silk. Instead, on October 12, 1492, they found the Bahamas. And tobacco.

Rodrigo de Jerez, one of  Columbus' crew, gets the credit for becoming the first European who was brave enough to light up. Back home in Spain, however, his neighbors were terrified by the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose. The local Inquisitor prophetically ruled that "only the Devil could give a man the power to exhale smoke" and sentenced Rodrigo to jail for seven years, which gave him plenty of time to kick the habit. But by the time he got out, everybody in Spain was reaching for a light. Tobacco was on its way to becoming one of the most valuable herbs in history—and the most deadly.

The dried leaves of tobacco were valued for the feeling of well-being that smoking imparted. But it was the herb’s medicinal properties that were most often touted. It was claimed to be especially effective in the treatment of headaches, toothache, worms, bad breath, lockjaw, and cancer. In 1603, a group of English physicians wrote an urgent letter to King James I, complaining that this drug was being used without a prescription; the king promptly levied a large import duty on tobacco imports and the price shot up.

That didn't stop people from lighting up, of course. A few years later, Sir Frances Bacon wrote that more people than ever were smoking, and that it was next to impossible to quit. And in the American colonies, where a would-be husband was required to fork over 120 pounds of tobacco for his bride’s ship passage, tobacco rapidly became the monetary standard. It helped to finance the American revolution, subsidized the practice of slavery, and contributed enormously to the new country’s growing wealth.

It wasn’t until some 500 years after Rodrigo took that first puff that tobacco's significant health risks were recognized. In 1906, the new Food and Drug Administration put nicotine on the list of drugs; it was removed after intense lobbying by the tobacco industry. The first tobacco lawsuit, filed by a man who lost his larynx to cancer, was won in 1962; the first second-hand smoke lawsuit was won in 1976. In 1995, the FDA finally declared nicotine a drug.

But cigarette smoking still causes one in every five deaths each year. Tobacco is one of the herbs that is not good for us.

More Reading:

• Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization, by Iain Gately

• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann

Tobaco is a remedy for the Tooth-ache, if the Teeth and Gumbs be rubbed with a linnen Cloth dipp’t in the juice, and afterward a round ball of the leaves laid unto the place.—John Gerard, The Herball, Or Generall Historie of Plantes

October’s To-Do List

Traditional Rosh Hashana food is rich in symbolism. Here are one family’s celebratory dishes.

Learn what Indigenous Peoples Day means to Native Americans in this thoughtful NPR post. Understand more by exploring Native American cookery. Start with these ideas, then focus on foods that are native to your own region. (Yes, you really can make acorn flour.) And do put Charles Mann’s excellent book (noted above, with the essay on tobacco) on your TBR list. You’ll never think of Columbus Day in the same way again.

What spicy stew is thickened with sassafras and okra? Gumbo, of course—a great choice for an October football weekend. This traditional Louisiana recipe has it all, including tasso (a Cajun specialty made from pork shoulder)—and yes okra and sassafras (aka filé powder). Also great with shrimp and chicken.

Read about Nicolas Culpeper, a maverick herbalist with a renegade wit, in a post I wrote for Mother Earth News.

What does witch hazel have to do with witches? Exactly nothing. The Mohican Indians used forked witch hazel sticks to locate underground water, and colonists eagerly copied them. But while "witching" for water (or precious metals) may sound spooky, the term has nothing to do with the supernatural. In England, small trees (ash, elm, hazel) were cut, or coppiced, to encourage the growth of pliant shoots, or wyches, for bows and woven fencing. Witch hazel shrubs reminded colonists of the coppiced trees back home. Learn more about this valuable astringent herb in the October 20 entry in The China Bayles' Book of Days.

Thank Felicitas for your good fortune by making a list of your lucky breaks. Not feeling fortunate? Here are a few suggestions:

• Romans washed their hands in chamomile before they put down their dinarii.

• Chinese strung nutmegs, star anise, and sandalwood in a lucky necklace.

• Swedes planted hen and chicks (Sempervivum) on the roof to bring good fortune and ward off bolts from the blue.

• The Irish looked for a four-leaf clover. The odds of finding one? 1 in 10,000.

• Still down on your luck? Try thyme, rosemary, spearmint, honeysuckle—and cross your fingers.

Why is a raisin-and-apple pie called “mincemeat”? Well, because it really was a minced meat pie, that’s why. These days, a mincemeat pie often starts with the packaged mix from the grocery. Or there’s my mother’s old-fashioned green tomato-apple mincemeat pie—using the green tomatoes I was sent to fetch from the garden before the frost got them. Here’s a similar recipe.

Met a witch you’d like to hinder? Here’s a charm that should do it, made famous by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering (1815). It reflects the long-held belief in the protective power of herbs:

Trefoil, vervain, John’s wort, dill, 
Hinder witches of their will.

You might also read Witches' Bane, the second mystery in the China Bayles series. China and Ruby never let a witch get away with anything!

And here in Texas, it’s time for pecan harvest. On National Nut Day, we get out the slow cooker and stir up some Tex-Mex Spiced Pecans—the ones we love to snack on and give away at the holidays. (You might also be interested in some of the other snack recipes on that page.)

Thanks for reading! I’d appreciate it if you’d ask your favorite librarian to put you on the waiting list for the latest China Bayles mystery, Forget Me Never.