In the middle ages, physicians, cooks, and housewives knew that herbs and plants had a variety of uses for keeping people healthy and the home clean.
Listed here are a number of plants we know were cultivated for food, medicine, and other helpful applications.
- Some useful definitions:
- beauty – a plant grown for its beauty
- cooking – a plant grown as a food source or spice
- dyeing – a plant grown for use as a dye
- fiber – a plant used for making thread/cloth
- fragrance – a plant grown for its scent
- fulling – a plant used in the process of turning raw fiber into thread/yarn
- medicine – a plant grown for medicinal uses
- repellant – a plant used as a pest repellant
- strewing – a plant used to lay around a room or chest to provide pest repellant and a pleasant fragrance
- Book References:
- Margaret B. Freeman – Herbs for the Mediaeval Household For Cooking, Healing and Divers Uses
- Sylvia Landsberg – The Medieval Garden
- Robin Whiteman – Brother Cadfael’s Herb Garden