This is one of the oldest plants cultivated by mankind, for its edible fruit. For example, Hibiscus esculentus bears a fruit which has been used extensively as a vegetable in Africa, Asia, Central and Latin America. Known as gombo or lalo on Réunion Island, it resembles somewhat courgette  (zucchini). It is eaten in salads when young, cooked when mature. More than 30,000 varieties are known.  Flowers remain twisted until they briefly open: for instance, they only last a single day in the species H. rosa sinensis. Bernard Shaw wrote: “The hibiscus is a flower to please, / Grown in a warm and temperate clime. / Reds, blues and whites do tease,/ With glowing colours so sublime.” Each flower has five sepals and five petals. The petals are often iridescent, which serves as a visual clue to in-sects such as bumblebees. The iridescence is due to the presence of a series of overlying cuticular striations that act as a diffraction grating. The five stamens are welded together into a long tube. The pistil often has five ovaries and a long style going through the tube of stamens. The flowering machinery of the hibiscus is most impressive in its frequent output. Leaves, often a deep green, are alternate, simple, ovate or lanceolate, with toothed or wavy edges. In many a folk culture, remedies draw on the hibiscus. For instance, teas made from the sepals of H. sabdariffa remedy hypertension.

Artemisia dracunculus is the scientific name for tarragon, an herb favored by both chefs and cooks. The name stems from its origins, a grass on the steppes of Central Asia. In Antiquity, it had the reputation of curing snakebite, which explains why the name in English and in many other languages is a cognate of “dragon”. The plant is tall, nearly 3 ft.-high, with multiple highly ramified stems. The leaves are narrow, dark green, smooth and shiny. A perennial, they die off during winter and sprout again in the spring. Tarragon belongs to the same genus, Artemisia, the plant absinthe is made from. The attendant promise of it containing biologically active chemicals is indeed the case. Everyone knows of its use in the kitchen, for example chicken flavored with tarragon is a well-known dish. Tarragon has a number of therapeutic uses as well. As part of ethnopharmacology, Iranian folk medicine used it as an antiepileptic, which may be related to monoterpenoids present in the essential oil having anticonvulsant and sedative activities. Thus, bipolar disorders are possible targets. Alcoholic extracts of tarragon, marketed as Tarralin, are hypoglycemic and thus of benefit to diabetics. Estragole (aka methylchavicol), a natural flavoring substance present in tarragon, presents a genotoxic risk, although muted by the antimutagenic tarragon leaves.

In brief, tarragon not only has a lovely smell and flavor, it won’t do you any harm!