The holy anointing oil of Exodus 30 has four aromatics, and the third is qaneh bosem, usually translated sweet cane or aromatic reed and usually identified with Acorus calamus, sweet flag. The plant fits: it is a marsh reed with a strongly aromatic rhizome, warm and slightly sharp, and it was traded through the ancient Near East.
The identification is not secure. Some scholars read qaneh bosem as a lemongrass, some as a true cinnamon, and one strand of argument since the 1980s has proposed cannabis on phonetic grounds, which is treated sceptically by most Semitists but keeps recirculating. The atlas records the identification as open.
The plant has an unusually wide independent life. In Ayurveda it is vacha, given for speech and for the mind. Across northern North America the rhizome is chewed as a stimulant and used medicinally by many peoples, and Acorus americanus is a distinct native species rather than an import. European brewers used it before hops, and it flavoured gin and absinthe.
Regulation has caught up with it. The beta-asarone in the diploid Asian varieties is carcinogenic in animal studies, and the United States banned calamus in food in 1968. The North American diploid variety contains essentially none, which the ban does not distinguish.