Sea Holly

Sea holly is the common name of Eryngium, a genus of some 250 species in the celery family, Apiaceae, found across much of the world, with its richest diversity in the western Mediterranean, South America and Mexico. They are annual or perennial herbs with stiff, mostly spiny leaves and domed heads of steely blue or white flowers set in a collar of spiny bracts; despite the name they are no relation of the true hollies. The British species, Eryngium maritimum, grows on sandy shores, its long fleshy roots reaching several feet down into the sand. Its young shoots have been cooked like asparagus and its roots boiled, roasted or candied: Grieve tells of a Colchester apothecary who made candied eryngo a trade in the seventeenth century, and connects the sweet with the 'kissing comfits' Falstaff mentions. Old herbalists gave the root for coughs, liver and kidney complaints and nervous disorders, and in Iran the plant is still taken as a tea. In the language of flowers it means admiration. In magic Cunningham places eryngo under Venus and water, with powers of love, lust and peace: travellers carry or wear it for a safe and lucky journey, it is scattered about a place or given to a quarrelling couple to restore peace, and, having once been eaten to stir desire, it now goes into love spells of every kind.