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The Lygaria or Lygia
as we used to call it in Kefalonia,
is a deciduous shrub that usually reaches 4 metres.
The leaves are soft almost velvety in texture
and because of their palmoid shape
a beginner easily confuses them with the leaves of the genus Canabis.
Its blue, impressive and fragrant flowers appear from mid-summer until September.
The plant is mentioned by
Pausanias as the oldest sacred tree
of the Greeks,
he first saw it himself when
visited the sanctuary of Hera in Samos.
According to legend,
Hera, the patron goddess of marriage
was born under a witch's bush.
Women in the ceremonies of
Thesmophoria
lying on the branches of a witch's lamp,
believing that by doing so
maintained their purity (Agnus-agnus).
The flexible twigs
of the lamp are used
from ancient times
to date
for basketry
but also as ropes
that create
strong knots.
Odysseus used the lamp
in order to bind his companions to the bellies of rams
and escape from the cave
of Cyclops Polyphemus.(Odyssey verse 9.427)
Its medicinal action is
known since ancient times
and mentioned by
Hippocrates and Dioscorides.
The extracts of its fruit
light is
particularly familiar to modern
pharmaceutical preparations
to address
premenstrual syndrome.
The fruits have a pungent taste and
used
as pepper substitutes. Formerly in the popular
medical
it was administered as an inhibitor of sexual urges
and that's why it was called "monks' pepper".
Probably because of the beauty of the flower
but also the properties of the plant
with its various uses there is the following popular saying:
"He that passeth by the lamp and taketh not a twig,
to wither to dry to fall on the bedstead"
(Theodor von Heldreich's Demotic Names of Plants)
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