Category Archives: Plants

Tracing the History of Qat

Agriculture, Anthropology/Sociology, Food and Drink, Plants, Qat (Catha edulis), Yemen


Selling qât in Yemen. Photo by Pascal Maréchaux

Much has been written, pro and con, about the chewing of qât leaves in Yemen. In addition to the economic and social problems over qat, there is a historical puzzle. When and how did the plant Catha edulis come from Ethiopia, its botanical origin, to Yemen? Yemeni legend and folkore suggest that the stimulant qualities of qat leaves were first discovered by a goatherd who noticed the effect on goats who browsed on the plant. A variant of this goat legend, told to me in 1979 by a poet from Husn al-‘Arus, suggests that an Ethiopian came along to explain to the goatherd what was happening. The goat is one of the few animals that can be seen occasionally eating qât leaves, but the story is surely apocryphal. Sometimes it is told for the origin of coffee, another stimulant brought from East Africa. Continue reading Tracing the History of Qat →

History of Frankincense

Archaeology and Antiquities, Oman, Plants


Omani women refreshing clothing with frankincense smoke

The website of the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center has a number of interesting online pages. One of these is a pictorial history of frankincense and myrrh. Here are some of the tidbits about both of these important trade items:

• Almost all frankincense comes from western Oman, where it is used for everything from deodorant and toothpaste to food and drink flavoring.
• Frankincense and myrrh were so expensive in Europe that southern Arabia became known as Arabia Felix, “Arabia the Blessed.” Continue reading History of Frankincense →

The flower that made men mad

Miniatures, Plants, Turkey


Nazende al (Flattering Red) from ‘The Book of Tulips’ ca 1725

by Anna Pavord

But as in any love affair, after the initial coup de foudre you want to learn more about the object of your passion. The tulip does not disappoint. Its background is full of more mysteries, dramas, dilemmas, disasters and triumphs than any besotted aficionado could reasonably expected. In the wild, it is an Eastern flower, growing along a corridor which stretches either side of the line of latitude 40 degrees north. The line extends from Ankara in Turkey eastwards through Jerevan and Baku to Turkmenistan, then on past Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent to the mountains of the Pamir-Alai, which, with neighbouring Tien Shan is the hotbed of the tulip family.

As far as western Europe is concerned, the tulip’s story began in Turkey, from where in the mid-sixteenth century, European travellers brought back news of the brilliant and until then unknown lils rouges, so prized by the Turks. In fact they were not lilies at all but tulips. In April 1559, the Zürich physician and botanist Conrad Gesner saw the tulip flowering for the first time in the splendid garden made by Johannis Heinrich Herwart of Augsburg, Bavaria. He described its gleaming red petals and its sensuous scent in a book published two years later, the first known report of the flower growing in western Europe. The tulip, wrote Gesner, had ‘sprung from a seed which had come from Constantinople or as others say from Cappadocia.’ From that flower and from its wild cousins, gathered over the next 300 years from the steppes of Siberia, from Afghanistan, Chitral, Beirut and the Marmaris peninsula, from Isfahan, the Crimea and the Caucasus, came the cultivars which have been grown in gardens ever since. More than 5,500 different tulips are listed in the International Register published regularly since 1929 by the Royal General Bulbgrowers’ Association of the Netherlands. Continue reading The flower that made men mad →

Flora primulaceae

Contemporary Art, Plants, Yemen


Drawing of a Yemeni primula plant by Hugo Haig-Thomas

Hugo Haig-Thomas–A Biography of a Special Artist
Painter and Diplomat of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. of Great Britain

By John Gilbert Bodenstein, President of The European Art Foundation

It is a pleasure to read the biography of Hugo Haig-Thomas, a special artist of our time. Some artists combine their creative activity with a normal career. In Germany Johann Wolfgang Goethe, for example, produced some of his literary works whilst holding an appointment which occupied him during the day. In France the German writer Rainer Maria Rilke was secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin. And the famous European author Ernst Juenger was an officer in both World Wars.

Haig-Thomas likewise was for a number of years a member of Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, but throughout his service he continued to paint and draw. Continue reading Flora primulaceae →