Amore Amaro

Original photo by: Elena Peabody.

Common yarrow and its alpine cousin musk yarrow have a sweet, astringent, and slightly bitter taste, and an anise-like smell.

Uses

Yarrow is one of the known ingredients in Amaro Bráulio, created by Dr. Francesco Pelolni in 1875, and which featured “a host of secret alpine herbs and botanicals that were traditionally foraged from the Bormio hillsides.”¹ The aerial parts of the plant may be used as a bitter digestive.²

Historical context

Yarrow was part of the medieval monastic tradition of flavoring alcoholic beverages with herbs and spices.³ Along with wormwood and meadowsweet, it was part of a bouquet of ingredients that went into a type of beer called Gruit, brewed before the discovery of hops in 800 CE.⁴

Dioscorides — a soldier, field botanist, and physician of the 1st century CE — included yarrow in a book which details more than 500 medicinal plants, and which was so popular that it was used for 600 years. While previously the plant had been treated with derision, it became a widely-used medicinal plant thereafter.⁵

Yarrow is noted in both the Antidotarium Nicolai and in Culpeper’s work for having many healing properties, and is still important in herbal medicine.^{6, 7} The Book of Herbal Wisdom, a more modern herbalary, writes of it under the heading, “A ‘Bitter Tonic’ for the Digestion,” and notes that yarrow can be a strong medicinal agent when acting upon the digestive tract.⁸

Cultivation

Yarrow grows natively across North America, Europe, and Western Asia. In the U.S., it is commonly found growing by roadsides.

Yarrow is an herbaceous perennial that grows well in full sun with dry to medium levels of water. It will tolerate lean, dry soils as long as drainage is good.

To encourage additional blooms, lateral flower buds should be cut after the initial flowering. After flowering, the entire plant may be sheared back to refresh foliage.⁹

Pests

Yarrow can can occasionally suffer from stem rot, powdery mildew and rusts. Storms and heavy rains may flatten the plants.¹⁰

References

1. Parsons, Brad Thomas. Amaro: The Spirited World of Bittersweet, Herbal Liqueurs, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas (Kindle edition). New York: Ten Speed Press, 2016 (loc. 645).
2. A-Z of Medicinal Herbs, p. 25. CITATION NEEDED.
3. McLean, Teresa. Medieval English Gardens. New York: Viking Press, 1980 (p. 25).
4. Stewart, Amy. The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks (Kindle edition). Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2013 (loc 3102).
5. Wheelwright, Edith Grey. Medicinal Plants and Their History. New York: Dover, 1974 (p. 81 – 82).
6. González Blanco, Marta Isabel. “An edition of the Middle English translation of the Antidotarium Nicolai.” MPhil thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018 (p. 132).
7. Culpepper, Nicholas. Culpepper’s Color Herbal. David Potterton, ed. New York: Sterling Publishing Company, 1983 (p. 204).
8. Wood, Matthew. The Book Of Herbal Wisdom: Using Plants as Medicine. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1997 (p. 74).
9. Missouri Botanical Garden, “Achillea millefolium.” Accessed July 6, 2019.
10. Ibid.