Hyacinths

The sweet perfume of hyacinths is once again wafting through Toronto markets.  We have a 16th Century German doctor, whose name sounds like lion heart raw wolf, to thank for these beautiful and intoxicatingly fragrant flowers.

Leonart Rauwolf (which means rough wolf) was a physician, botantist, and published travel writer whose claim to fame was a three year journey from Germany to Iraq, via the Mediterranean.  In 1573, he left his Augsburg, home in Germany's Bavaria region, and travelled to Marseilles, in the South of France.  From there, he travelled to Tripoli, Lebanon, and then on to Allepo, Syria, where he stayed until the following year, when he journeyed to what was then Mesopotamia.  Today, we would say Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq.  He followed much the same route back home, with a side trip to Jerusalem.  

   

Dr. Rauwolf returned to Germany with more than six hundred plants!  That's a lot of luggage on a trip!  Hyacinth plants were among his collection.  The plant was not unknown, it is found in ancient Greek myth, however, it had disappeared, and the botanist reintroduced it to Europe.

The plants with waxy, curled, bell-shaped flowers didn't look the way they do today.  Hyacinths of old had only a few flowers on a stem.  Commercial growers in the Netherlands and the UK have produced compact, multiple florets on hyacinths.  Hyacinth is available in deep pink, baby pink, yellow, cream, and white.  The most popular are the light blue, lavender, and deep purple varieties.

The unforgettable fragrance of hyacinth is indescribable.  It is a sweet, floral scent with the light freshness of a Spring rain...yet, it is powerful enough to fill every room in a house with fragrance.  As the days pass, the fragrance becomes slightly bitter, and it's time for a fresh bouquet!  Hyacinth combines well with tulips and pussywillows, which are unscented.   

Hyacinth is from the Greek Hyakinthos, a young man the gods Apollo and Zephyrus were training in manhood.  In this Greek tragedy, Zephyrus, the god of the West Wind becomes jealous watching the sun god, Apollo teaching Hyakinthos how to throw a discus.  He blows the discus off course, and it strikes Hyakinthos in the head, killing him.  Blood flows, and out of the blood, a hyacinth flower grows.  Who says Greek tragedies aren't pretty? 

In researching Dr. Rauwolf's travels, I came upon a wonderful description he wrote of something which was new to him: coffee drinking!  "A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost black as ink and very good in illness especially of the stomach.  This they drink in the morning early in the open places before everybody, without any fear or regard, out of china cups, as hot as they can, sipping it a little at a time". 

Wake up and smell the coffee...and the hyacinths!

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.