Nicholas Culpeper, whose 1653 English herbal fixed the planetary rulerships still quoted in correspondence tables, placed chamomile under the Sun, the luminary of vitality and warmth, which suited a bright, cheering, gently heating herb. In folk and magical practice chamomile carries meanings of calm, patience and the dispelling of gloom, and it was among the plants scattered to sweeten and protect a house. Gamblers were said to wash their hands in a chamomile infusion for luck. These meanings are read from the plant's genuine qualities, its apple sweetness, its resilience underfoot, its warm and quieting infusion, rather than derived from any hidden virtue.
Chamomile was historically grown as a lawn in its own right rather than only as a border herb, prized in Tudor and Elizabethan England for the apple scent it released underfoot when walked or sat upon; the practice has never entirely died out, and a chamomile lawn is still maintained in the garden of Buckingham Palace, a small surviving example of a once-common English horticultural fashion. Species matters here: two different plants share the name chamomile. German chamomile, Matricaria chamomilla, an annual grown mainly for tea and medicinal infusion, and Roman chamomile, Chamaemelum nobile, a low, mat-forming perennial, the species actually used for chamomile lawns such as the one still kept at Buckingham Palace.