Chamomile

Chamomile is the common name of two related daisy-family plants, the annual German chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) and the perennial Roman chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile), both bearing small white-rayed yellow-centred flowers and a scent often likened to apples, the Greek name khamaimelon means earth-apple. It was a classic strewing herb and lawn plant, and in Egypt its cheering, warming quality led it to be dedicated to the sun. Its long domestic reputation is as a mild, calming plant, an association read from the soothing effect of its warm infusion; that reputation is recorded here as folk history rather than as any medical claim.

Modern pharmacological research has looked specifically at apigenin, a compound concentrated in chamomile flowers that binds to the same brain receptors as anti-anxiety medications in laboratory studies, a genuine avenue of clinical research into the plant's old reputation for calm, though the clinical evidence in humans remains limited and mixed; Germany's Commission E, the regulatory body that evaluates herbal remedies for that country's health authorities, has approved chamomile preparations for certain mild digestive and skin uses, one of relatively few herbs in this family of articles with that specific formal regulatory recognition.

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.