Are you, or do you know, a dull old person? Well read on because Sweet Cicely may be the cure!

John Gerard was an Elizabethan physician and gardener, who published what became the most famous of all herbals - and I thoroughly recommend reading it, for pure entertainment value, if nothing else.

He writes of Myrris odorata (Sweet Cicely):

"The roots are likewise most excellent in a sallad, if they be boiled and afterwards dressed as the cunning Cooke knoweth how better than my selfe: notwithstanding I use to eat them with oile and vineger, being first boiled; which is very good for old people that are dull and without courage: it rejoiceth and comforteth the heart, and increaseth their lust and strength."

More of his wonderful description of this useful plant in the plant details here.

Photo: Hectonichus, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons