If This Is True, I Am So Stoked

This is Silphium!


Is this Silphium?

And by so stoked, I mean even more stoked than finding that Hugh Jackman will reprise Wolverine in the next Deadpool.

Some researchers believe that they have rediscovered Silphium in Turkey, the fabulously expensive spice and medicinal herb beloved by the ancient Romans.

I have cooked using a similar, though historically less prestigious spice, Asafoetida (also called Parthian Laser in Apicius, while Silphium is also called Laser) in recreations of historical recipes, so if this is true, I want to get my hands on the resin:

A “miracle” plant consumed by Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, which was thought to have become extinct two thousand years ago, has now been rediscovered in Turkey by a professor, who thinks he’s found a botanical survivor.

The plant, which the Ancient Greeks called silphion (silphium), was a golden-flowered plant. It was once the most sought-after product in the Mediterranean even before the rise of Athens and the Roman Empire.

It is believed that the plant with yellow flowers attached to a thick stalk was crushed, roasted, sauteed, and boiled for medicinal purposes, food, and even contraception. [It should be noted that evidence of its use as a contraceptive is a bit sketchy, but it definitely was used as an aphrodisiac] During the reign of Julius Caesar, more than a thousand pounds of the plant were stockpiled alongside gold in Rome’s imperial treasures, and silphion saplings were valued at the same price as silver.

However, just seven centuries after the adored plant was first documented growing along the coast of Cyrenaica in what is now modern day Libya, silphion disappeared from the ancient Mediterranean world.

Roman chronicler Pliny the Elder in his Natural History claims that “just one stalk has been found” of the plant in the first century A.D., “and it has been given to Emperor Nero.” This was the last documented account of the silphion.

………

Despite the plant having been perceived to be extinct for centuries and having completely disappeared from the history books, a researcher at Istanbul University, Mahmut Miski, suspects he has re-discovered the ancient plant. He believes the Ferula Drudeana that grows on Mount Hasan is the elusive ancient plant—nearly a thousand miles from where it once grew.

According to a report by National Geographic, the researcher found it has similarities with the silphion plant which line up with old botanical texts and images of the plant on Ancient Greek coins.

I make a hobby of redacting historical recipes, and this is like the holy grail of ancient spices.