Calling all herb geeks

[annathepiper]

So I have a small point of research I'm trying to figure out for Lament of the Dove, and my point of research is this:

I have a situation where my girl Faanshi needs to make a clever suggestion to another character about how to get some serious stink off his hands. kathrynt suggested that she should point out some herbs growing wild near his house that he might use, but while I'm finding references to several strongly aromatic herbs poking around Wikipedia and a couple of other sites, I'm not entirely sure yet what might be the best suggestion for her to make. Also, I'm not entirely certain how she ought to suggest the other character use them in the first place.

Anybody out there have any thoughts on the topic? Let me hear 'em! Right now the main candidates jockeying for my attention are hyssop, lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, pennyroyal, basil, and meadowsweet. (I know several of these have other uses, but these are the main interesting aromatic herbs I've been reading about tonight.)

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

I'd want to consider the climate and season to choose an appropriate plant based on that.

Lavender is a traditional washing herb, its name is from the same root as laundry. It tends to do best in a fairly dry climate (which is why there are so many lavender farms around Sequim) but it will grow reasonably well in, say, my mom's yard in Bellevue.

You might also check out soapwort, not so aromatic, but good for washing.

Basil is really a summer herb. It likes lots of sun.

Pennyroyal and lemon balm (mm love lemon balm) are both related to mint, which propgates LIKE MAD; most mint family plants are good candidates for running wild from a previous garden.

I don't think of chamomile as having a strong enough scent to banish a serious stink.

[annathepiper]

The time of year in the story is summer; the climate is, I daresay, a good analog of what you might get in Spain or Portugal.

I kind of liked what I was seeing in the pages I've read on lemon balm. From what you're saying here, lavender, soapwort, and lemon balm might be the best of the ones I'm eyeing?

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Probably so. if it's a Mediterranean-type climate, then lavender is pretty likely to be around, it grows like mad in Provence.

I just love lemon balm in general. It's said to calm the nerves, too, if that's a useful extra property for your situation.

Would it help to have a snip each of lavender and lemon balm?

[annathepiper]

If a bit of lavender and lemon balm would improve the chances of my other character getting the stink of turned pig fat off his hands, then it'd be helpful to use both. :)

Q's telling me she likes soapwort and parsley for what I need to do, too. I shall have to ponder this.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant for YOU to have a snip each. To play with and ponder. I have access to both growing fresh right now.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Soapwort would be good for actually *cleaning* the hands, not just hiding the stink. They still use it in certain curatorial tasks if I remember the tour at Fort Vancouver right, mainly for gentle cleaning of old textiles, that kind of thing.

I know parsley when chewed is a great breath-freshener, never tried it on my hands. ;)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

So I did some herb-picking in mom's garden while there to feed her cats.

Her lemon balm has somewhat gone to seed and isn't as lemony as it once was.

The test: rub some fresh leaves briskly between the palms.

Lemon balm: hands smell sort of greenish with a faint hint of lemon.
Lavender: hands smell lavender-ish with an undertone of chlorophyll.
Sage and Rosemary: strong smells yet.

The winner in the "makes hands most smell like something else" sweepstakes: mint. One mint leaf made the whole inside of the car smell like mint when I did the rub test.

So I'd think what you'd want to do is wash with something like Q's soapwort + parsley suggestion to clean and de-stink, and then scent with culinary herbs after to cover up any lingering scent traces.

[annathepiper]

Cool. I'm setting it up so that this character has a hugely overgrown garden not far from his house--probably from either the previous owner of the house, long-untended since the death of a family member. He's clueless about herbs, so he has no idea what to do with anything that grows there.

So let me ask you this--since Faanshi has only a day or two to spend at this man's house, what can she do with these herbs to let him actually use them for the purpose at hand, would you say? Soap-making is, from what I understand, a hugely time-consuming process and beyond Faanshi's ability.

Think the equivalent of rural late 18th century Britain here, for the kind of tech and culture I'm dealing with here.

[annathepiper]

Parsley got mentioned to me by kathrynt, too.

The challenge I have aside from which herbs Faanshi should use, too, is what she can do with them to accomplish the task at hand. She has a couple of days in which she and the other characters will be hanging out at this guy's remote little cottage, so she's got some time to kill. However, I suspect that making actual soap would be beyond her.

Any thoughts on what she could do?

[annathepiper]

Ah, okay! Heh. It might help at least in terms of giving me a concrete reference for appropriate adjectives, but right now I'm more worried about what I can have Faanshi actually do with the herbs. (It doesn't have to be complicated, and neither do I intend to spend much plot time on it because it's only a side detail against the actual main action of these two chapters, but it's one of those little things I'd like to get right.)

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

Soapwort's not actual soap (nor used to make soap), despite it's name- it's got little pink flowers, and has lots of other names. It looks like it's native to temperate climates- so whether your character would find it in a Mediterranean type place, I'm not sure. Maybe it's not common, but grows in some north-facing, partly shady, cooler spot? ;)

Found this link for you- I had *no* idea of the other uses for the plant. Interesting!

http://www.pdrhealth.com/drug_info/nmdrugprofiles/herbaldrugs/102620.shtml

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I picked up on the nature of soapwort just by looking it up on various places--the part that interested me was the part about it making suds when you take the crushed roots and mix 'em up with water. What I've wound up doing is having Faanshi mentioning crushing the root of that up, tossing several other fragrant herbs in with it, and mixing the lot up with salt to make it gritty. kathrynt proclaimed this as something she'd "buy in a fantasy novel", so at least for this draft, that's going to be what's in there. We'll see what happens when I come back around for the first edit pass!

And thanks for the link and your input, it is much appreciated. :)