Conopodium majus

Conopodium majus , the stripped conopode, is a species of the family of the Apiaceae (Ombellifère). It is a small plant whose underground tuber is edible and who has a hazel nut taste. With its flowering between May and July (small white flowers), it loses its sheets (what is worth its vernacular name to him).

Distribution and Habitat

In Western Europe: it is found Italy with the Norway. It is common in the British Isles, rare on the continent with height of the the North Sea, but seeming in extension towards North and the North-East. One also meets it in North Africa.

One finds this conopode in wood lights and the clearings, in edge or in the ways of forests. Generally in the acid, light grounds.

Its gathering

Better is worth to only collect the tubers where the plant is really abundant. In general, they are deeply inserted in the ground and the stem breaks easily: their harvest is not always easy.

Characteristics and folklore

Eaten believed, one lends virtues to him alleviating the heartburn. It can also taste stove, or other (cf will infra). In Ireland one says that Conopode is the preferred food of the Leprechauns. In Scotland, a proverb known as of the conopode “if you eat too much of it, you will have lice full the head”.

Vernacular names, etymology and history.

It is called Janotte or Jarnotte , Génotte or Gernotte , Jeanette , Jeanotte . Mugette in the the Pyrenees, Abernotte in the Vendée, Kraoñ-douar, keler or kolor in Brittany, Castañuelas (“the Castanet”) in Spain.

It is very said appraisal by the brown bears in the French Pyrenees. In England, it is with the pig that one allots this popularity, from where names pignut or hognut .

Also, by derivative, one calls it the nut of saint Antoine (Antoine of Egypt, who was inter alia, the owner of the pig-keepers). Indeed, of many representations of the saint (only since the end of 14th S.) show it to us accompanied by a pig carrying a small bell. The pig has nothing to do with the life of the saint but with an religious order founded in Dauphiné in 1095: the Antonins. The pigs did not have the right to wander freely in the streets, except for those of Antonins, recognizable with their small bell.

Étymologiquement, the word Jarnotte and all these derivatives is inherited a dialect Viking of the Moyen-âge: the Old norrois. Thus, the Jarðhnot , as they called it, is a ground nut. It should be noted that aujourd' today in Norway, one calls it Jordnøtt .

Synonym

Conopodium denudatum Koch.

External bonds

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