A Timeless History
The name is usually traced to Latin lavare, to wash, and monastery gardens grew it as medicine through the Middle Ages. Provence's oil came from wild plants cut on the mountains of Lure and Ventoux — some 60 tonnes a year by the 1890s — and the first fields were planted only in the early twentieth century. England's largest fields were at Mitcham, Surrey; Norfolk's date from 1932.
SourceJardins de France (SNHF) — jardinsdefrance.org, “La production française de lavande et lavandin” · Norfolk Lavender — norfolk-lavender.co.uk
Science In Action
A square stem — the signature of the mint family, which lavender belongs to • Bottom-up — the rings open from the base of the spike upward, so one spike stays in flower for weeks • Two lips — a small upper lip and a broader lower lip that works as a bee's landing platform • Oil glands — microscopic sacs on leaf and calyx that burst when pressed: the scent when you brush past
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org · Royal Horticultural Society — rhs.org.uk
Arts
In 1828 Charles Philipon drew a Paris perfume-seller lifting a little lavender bag to her nose — number 25 in his series of Parisian women's trades, printed in colour by Joséphine Formentin and sold in Paris and London. Lavender was already the everyday scent of the trade: sachets for the linen, water for the washstand.
SourceWellcome Collection, London — wellcomecollection.org, 30608i
Applications Today
A protected name — Haute-Provence essential oil has an AOP, the instrument that protects a wine region • What the AOP recognizes — only true lavender, grown above 800 m; lavandin, the hybrid, does not qualify
SourceINAO — Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité, AOP Huile essentielle de lavande de Haute-Provence — inao.gouv.fr
Lavandin sets almost no seed: every plant in a lavandin field was grown from a cutting.
Two pseudonardus plants (lavender), from Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes — Leonhart Fuchs (author); woodcuts after Albrecht Meyer, Heinrich Füllmaurer, Veit Rudolf Speckle; hand-coloured copy — Basel: Isingrin, 1542 — Wellcome Collection, London — L0051256 (work b27qx498 / kbf5pt3t)
