Mandrakes, mandragora, aint no mountain high enough

[partisangardener]

It kills excellent pain if taken enough humans too.
It is not at all related to ginseng. I would love to grow it again. Lost all my plants some years ago.
I had plants from Rhodos (Greece) and some seed grown from GB.
From the rhodos type are some left in the garden of my sister in Rome. But she never gets fruits.

[melbee]

I think what our friend from Taiwan means is that both roots resemble the human form with arms and legs and other appendages .The two roots also have similar folk lore .In china people were burned as witches for owning a root the same as Europe in the 17th century .
But of course Ginseng is a healthful tonic . Eating mandragora officinarum (mandrake) will turn you into a drooling barking mad dead person. 

If you would like some mandragora officinarum (mandrake) seeds email me .

[Lesley Cox]

A drooling, barking mad person who is dead? That's scary.

[Rodger Whitlock]

A drooling, barking mad person who is dead? That's scary.

Well, it should be scary! It's a zombie Melbee is describing.

[Lesley Cox]

Ah, I didn't think of them and thought zombies were kind of alive but with no life in them if you see what I mean, whereas someone barking mad would be pretty lively I'd think. So it seems I know quite a few zombies and I thought they were just idiots.

[melbee]

ahaaaaaaaaaa you have spotted my weakness ,punctuation and sentence structure .Which is suprising when you consider how good I am at poetry .

[Lesley Cox]

You certainly are Melbee, and I hope you'll treat us to some more soon.

I also like the drooling, barking mad comment, then the offer of seeds of the plant that will do the trick. No hidden agenda, I hope.

[melbee]

No hidden agendas really .I probably do what every one else does, wash the car, clean the windows, do a bit of gardening, consider leading a zombie army to total world domination .That sort of thing, muhaaaa muhaaaa

Anyway I have a serious question .The mandragora officinarum fruit .Its usual colour is green to yellow .On the rare occasions I have had fruit I have pulled them when they were dark green .Has anyone seen a red one ? Is it a green or yellow one that is over ripe?

[Tony Willis]

Mine have certainly only been green even when ripe and about the size of a chicken egg.

The Turkish ones were yellow and red on different plants but only the size of quails eggs (just introducing a bit of class there)

[Rodger Whitlock]

Aren't Turkish mandragora considered to be subspecies haussknechtii?

I had seed of that abt 30 years from the RHS, and grew the plants to flowering & fruiting size, but lost them when I moved house and they froze to death in pots. I've never seen seed of that subspecies again. Brian Mathew once saw them on a visit here and opined that they were what they claimed to be. I don't recall that they differed from the mandrakes I now have, which arrived as plain old Mandragora officinarum.

Footnote implicit in the preceding paragraph: I have dug up mandrakes and can attest that they screamed not, neither did blind or insane I go, though drooling, barking mad remains a distinct possibility.

[partisangardener]

I understood it referred to eating not digging.

[Tony Willis]

Aren't Turkish mandragora considered to be subspecies haussknechtii?

I had seed of that abt 30 years from the RHS, and grew the plants to flowering & fruiting size, but lost them when I moved house and they froze to death in pots. I've never seen seed of that subspecies again. Brian Mathew once saw them on a visit here and opined that they were what they claimed to be. I don't recall that they differed from the mandrakes I now have, which arrived as plain old Mandragora officinarum.

One of my two species from Turkey is autumnale and the other is possibly ssp haussknechtii. I collected ripe fruits of both and this is how I obtained my seed. I grow officinarum in the garden and have put pictures of its fruit earlier in the thread. The fruits from Turkey have no resemblance to those and are as I said in my previous post.Unfortunately I was so excited at seeing and collecting them I forgot to photograph them. They may of course not be Mandragora only time will tell.

[Paul T]

I understood it referred to eating not digging.

Axel,

That depends whether you watch Harry Potter or not. 

[Maggi Young]

I understood it referred to eating not digging.

Axel,

That depends whether you watch Harry Potter or not. 

 Note to self: Try to make 2010 the year I read the Harry Potter books......

[Michael J Campbell]

Note to self: Try to make 2010 the year I read the Harry Potter books...

You wouldn't Maggi,would you?