Rue (Ruta graveolens)
Flowers: June to July. Height: 75cm (30in).
Rue was popular enough to be named the Herb of Grace while the shape and blue-green colour of its leaves were admired for their beauty in the Middle Ages. Used as a strewing herb and as a medieval disinfectant for cleaning.
Medicinal: A treatment for headaches, eye problems, bites, plague, poisons, infections and rickets. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (1653) recorded it as “a remedy for the pains or griefs in the chest or stomach, of the spleen, belly, or sides, by wind or stitches”.
Culinary: The intensely aromatic leaves were prized as a condiment for seasoning food or used as a tea. Also employed as an ale clarifier.
Magic & Myth: It was used as a holy water sprinkler in exorcisms.
