Centaury

Overview

Centaury is one of the most intensely bitter plants in the European herbal tradition — more bitter than wormwood by some measures, more reliably so than gentian. It is a small, upright plant, easily passed over on chalk downland and coastal grassland, its flat-topped clusters of pink flowers opening only in full sun and closing before rain. The bitterness is its entire identity as a medicinal plant: concentrated in the stems and leaves, relentless on the tongue, stimulating every digestive secretion in sequence.

Botanical Notes

An annual or biennial, 10–50cm, with a basal rosette of oval, shiny leaves and an erect, branching stem bearing compact, flat-topped cymes of bright pink, five-petalled flowers from June to September. The flowers open only in sunshine; in cloud or shade they remain closed. Found on dry calcareous grassland, dunes, cliffs, and open woodland edges throughout Europe and western Asia. The genus name derives from the centaur Chiron of Greek myth. Contains secoiridoid glycosides (swertiamarin, gentiopicroside) responsible for its pronounced bitterness, and alkaloids including gentianine.

Lore & History

The myth attached to centaury is one of the most melancholy in the herbalist tradition. Chiron, wisest of the centaurs and teacher of heroes — of Achilles, of Jason — was wounded accidentally by one of the poisoned arrows of Hercules. The wound would not close, the pain would not cease, and Chiron, immortal, could not die to escape it. He treated the wound with the plant that bears his name, and found relief. The implication — that a plant powerful enough to ease an immortal wound earned its place in medicine — ran through the European herbal tradition from Dioscorides onward. The older English name was feverwort; it was one of the standard treatments for intermittent fevers in the centuries before quinine arrived from the New World.

Warnings