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Basil Through the Ages

Humble basil, a common and rather ordinary herb? Not! Basil has been known, grown, revered, and feared since ancient times. It was believed to have originated in India, where it was regarded as a sacred herb. (In some Indian courts of law today, one type of basil—holy basil—is used in place of the Bible.) But in the first century AD the Greek physician Dioscorides warned that basil dulled the sight and produced "wind." Physicians of the time used it to heal a variety of ailments. To grow an abundant crop, they stomped on the seeds and yelled insults at them! (This may not be as silly as it sounds. Tiny basil seeds contain a jellylike material which surrounds the seeds when they are watered. A good stomping might have kept the seeds from floating away.)

By the middle ages, basil had made its way to Europe, then traveled to England and America in the mid-17th century. According to an Herbal published in England in the 1600s, the smell of basil was "good for the heart and for the head." The seeds "cureth the infirmities of the heart and taketh away the sorrow which commeth with melancholy and maketh a man merry and glad." It also advised that the juice of the plant was effective in treating headaches, if it were drunk with wine, and was a useful remedy for diseases of the eye.

Others, however, claimed that basil bred the scorpions that could be found beneath a pot where basil grew—a belief that arose, perhaps, from the prevalence of scorpions in some of the tropical regions of Asia and Africa where basil thrived, and their predilection for warm, dark places. Still others believed that basil itself offered a cure; it would draw out the pain and poison from scorpions and other venomous beasts. Fortunately, the Italians had greater admiration for basil than fear of scorpions. They regarded the plant as a symbol of love. An Italian signorina might have placed a basil plant on her balcony to let her beau know that he was welcome to call.

Before the invention of air conditioning, when doors and windows were kept open in summer, basil served another key role; it was hung in door frames and window sills to repel flies and mosquitos. It wasn't until the 19th century that basil played the starring role in North American herb gardens that it does today.

History Activities for Growing Classrooms

Some material on these basil pages was excerpted from The National Garden Bureau's Year of the Basil fact sheet, Eleanore Lewis, author.