lavender

Name Origins.

The lavender shrub is named from the Latin lavare, to wash because the ancient Romans and Carthaginians used lavender in their bath water as a perfume as well as for its therapeutic properties. Burnett, says of the ancients that they "employed the flowers and the leaves to aromatize their baths, and to give a sweet scent to the water in which they washed."
 
Turner in his work A New Herball from the mid-1500s, however, provides the explanation that the name originated from lavare "Because wyse men founde by experience that it was good to washe mennes heades with, which had any deceses therein, or wieknes that come of a colde cause..."
 

Lavender in the Ancient World.

The Greeks called lavender Nardus, from Naarda, a city of Syria. Many simply called the plant Nard. In the Gospel of St. Mark, lavender is referred to as Spikenard, which at the time was considered something of great value. He tells of a woman who came to Christ with an alabaster box containing ointment of Spikenard and who broke the box and proceded to pour the valuable ointment on his head (one would assume this was a good thing).
 
During Pliny's time (23 - 79 AD), blossoms of nardus sold for 100 Roman denarii per pound, a quite princely sum equalling the cost of ten pounds of bread or ten litres of cheap wine.
 
The Romans, however, called lavender Asarum. That name evolved from their belief that the much-poisonous asp viper lived among lavender and that the plant must therefore be approached with great caution.
 

Lavender Cultivation in England.

In the 12th Century, in the North of England, a washerwoman was called Lavender due to the custom of scenting newly washed linen with the herb - it was believed that the herb would also keep the linens moth and insect-free. The practice is the origin of the colloquialism "to be laid up in lavender".
 
Further references are made to the presence of lavender in England in the 12th Century in Book of the Physicians of Myddvai" where it was referred to as 'Llafant' and in the Feate of Gardening where it was referred to as 'Lavyndull'.
 
Lavender has been cultivated in England since the mid-1500s and has been grown throughout the centuries since for commercial purposes. Many of our materials mention England, particularly Surrey, as a location most suitable for growing lavender. Several publications dating from the late 1800s mention that lavender oil from Britain could garner market prices as much as 4-6 times greater than the oil produced from plants grown in France and elsewhere on the continent. (Our sources disagree as to the price factor, but the essence is clear that the British oil was deemed far more desireable than that from lavender grown elsewhere.)
 
Queen Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603) was said to have been partial to a conserve made with lavender flowers. Queen Henrietta Maria (1609 - 1669), wife of Charles I, was partial to a tender white variety of lavender at a time when the herb was rarely grown for its appearance and only grown for it's medicinal and perfumery properties. Though by 1766, John Reid in The Scots Gardener discusses the merits of using lavender as an edging for large garden walks.
 
Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) mentions lavender in Winter's Tale and uses lavender and other flowers to denote middle age.
 
In 17th Century Ireland, lavender was often used for lawns and was kept trimmed to a few inches tall through the use of a scythe. Sir Arthur Rawdon, famous for his gardens at Moira Castle in County Down was said to have a lawn of lavender that covered more than an acre back in 1683. Sadly, all that remains today of the gardens and castle are a few of the castle's foundations.
 
In The Art of Perfumery, published in 1857, the author claims that the best oil is obtained from the lavender grown at Mitcham, in Surrey. "All the inferior descriptions of oil of lavender are used for perfuming soaps and greases." The superior oil from Mitcham, on the other hand is reserved for what was referred to as lavender water.
 

Historical Uses of Lavender Outside of England.

Prior to the two world wars of the 20th Century, the 'lavender still' would visit small towns and remote mountain villages in Europe to distill their lavender into the essential oil. Peasants in France would bring their loads of harvested lavender to the market-place to be distilled. During harvest time, the usual disagreeable community smells of drains and garlic would be supplanted by the aroma of the distillation of the fragrant herb.
 
In Africa, at one time (no date was provided), lavender was considered indispensable. A quotation in their native tongue when translated means, "where the Libyans make use of it for washing their bodies, nor ever leave their houses of a morning until purified by a decoction of the plant."
 

 

History of Lavender - Part II.

The history of lavender continues with a discussion of lavender uses in folklore and medicine.
 

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