Order: Apiales (APG IV, Cronquist)Family: Apiaceae Lindl. With approximately 250 species distributed in Eurasia, North Africa, North and South America, and Australia (with the center of diversity in South America), Eryngium L. is the largest and arguably the most taxonomically complex genus of the family Apiaceae. Like many other members of the celery or carrot family, Eryngium has been …
Tag: Traditional medicine
Tastes and Herbal Energetics – The Sweet Taste
Today, we are going to speak about the sweet taste: little used in western herbalism and much appreciated within the Eastern traditions, sweet drugs are comforting, tonifying and nutritious.
Tastes and Herbal Energetics – The Bitter Taste
One of the less pleasant of all tastes, but nevertheless so important form the therapeutical point of view: bitter. Let’s have a look at the nature of this taste and of its secondary tastes: acrid-bitter and bitter due to cyanogenetic glycosides.
Tastes and Herbal Energetics – The Salty Taste
Let’s have a look at a taste so peculiar, because of its important and, at least apparently, conflicting functions: indeed, it can soften and wet, or dry: the salty (or saline) taste.
Tastes and Herbal Energetics – The Aromatic Taste
Today we deal with the aromatic taste, that, as we will see, is related someway to the pungent taste, so much that it can almost be considered a secondary taste.
Tastes and Herbal Energetics – The Pungent Taste
Taste is traditionally linked to herbal energetics, since according to all the principal herbal traditions the action exerted by each herb is strongly connected to its taste (or tastes). The tastes formally recognized as such by modern science are: sweet, salty, bitter, acid and, since not long, also umami (which we can think of as the “taste of proteins”) and …
The Energetic Theory of the Mediterranean Tradition
In order to understand the actions of herbs according to the traditional systems of medicine, we must first master the philosophies and concepts that underlay such traditions. Contemporary medicine is based on a mainly analytical approach and is founded on biochemistry and on the modern concepts of anatomy, physiology and pathology; traditional medicines, instead, were based upon models more or …