November 19, 2003
Rue
It’s a lovely little plant whose delicate greenish yellow flowers make little show. Trouble is, we’ve never known its name until the other day when CP was walking a friend through her garden. Suddenly, he stopped, reached down to the little anonym and said, “Look at that fine stand of rue.”
Rue, I thought, when she told me about it. Sorrow. Regret. What a name for a plant. My curiosity set me to work discovering that it’s a herb (*Ruta graveolens*) and, like many such, with a tale to tell.
Next to wormwood, rue — Shakespeare’s “herb o’grace” or, more colloquially, herbygrass — is the most bitter of plants. The 16th-century herbalist Thomas Tusser recommended the two for strewing in sick rooms: “What saver be better, if physick be true, For places infected than wormwood and rue.” An aura of mystery hangs about the bushes, that strange, acrid scent of the blue-green leaves seems to conjure past associations with witches, magic, spells, and incantations.
I discovered further that rue has always been counted a prime herbal antidote to poisons and plagues, as well as to the less material, but no less malevolent evil eye. I never thought much about the Eye until the other day when a colleague told me that because of the stir following my church’s recent momentary surrender to grace, it was now considered by some to be a cult. What better place, I thought, to lay in a supply of rue. We may need it.