Two days ago, Ben Yaoshi shared a story of Europe's use of sage to fight the epidemic, which makes our eyes continue to return to medieval Europe.
In the mid-14th century, the deadly plague "Black Death" spread across Europe, but those who worked in perfume factories rarely fell ill.
At that time, many scientists studied this phenomenon and found that these people were greatly immune due to long-term exposure to essential oils, so they were exempt from the infection of the plague.
At this point, the use of essential oils has reached an unprecedented peak in Europe.
In the 16th century, large areas of lavender fields began to appear in the Grasse region of the French province of Provence, providing the world with high-quality lavender essential oils, and it is still the world's main town for the production of lavender essential oils.
This story is quoted from Mr. Hang Su's 2016 article "Flowers Bloom and Fragrant" published in the journal Science Public.
Coincidentally, Mr. Zhang Qi also told a story in Yishou magazine:
During the plague years, there was a small town in England called Berklesbur, which was also the trading center for spices such as lavender because of its abundant production of lavender.
The air of the town is always filled with fragrant aromas, and this place has miraculously escaped the plague.
Later, medical scientists realized that spices have excellent anti-inflammatory and bactericidal effects, and modern medicine has a traditional method of anti-inflammatory sterilization with spice extracts.
One of the views of "Flowers Blooming and Fragrant Fragrance" is that the perfume of man, the poison of insects, is worth learning from, and it is also recorded here.
The perfume of man, the poison of insects
On the one hand, plants protect pollination and results by releasing floral fragrance to attract insects; on the other hand, floral fragrance is a defensive strategy to resist insects, herbivores or pathogens from harming plants. Many volatiles are active against microorganisms and herbivores, and some aromatic substances are toxic to some animals in special circumstances. For example, eugenol is an antibacterial compound and antifungal agent, which has a pronounced anti-herbivorous insect effect, it can prevent insects from eating and it is still toxic to some beetles; methyl salicylate can be used as an antifungal agent; linalool can be produced when plant leaves are eaten, which is toxic to herbivores.
Pollinators may have identified the relationship between these compounds and plant flowering during evolution, forming a co-evolution of insects and plant flowers. For example, the flower scent of some orchids resembles the insect pheromone of a female single-lived bee, and even the shape and color of the flowers are very similar to those of female bees. Male bees discover this scent and choose to land on the flowers and cause them to be covered with pollen. When the male bee searches for the female from one flower to another, it also completes pollination and pollination between the plants. In addition, for some special carnivorous plants, they attract insects by producing floral volatiles, and by analyzing the different aromas of the upper and lower pitchers of Nepenthes, it is found that the upper pitcher releases relatively more volatiles, which can attract more flies.
People pollinate different crops by domesticating bees. Bees generally look for flowers through a synthesis of color, shape, smell, etc., and the correlation between these important traits and bees is still an active field of study. Trials have shown that if a plant lacks a certain fragrance substance, it may lead to unsuccessful pollination. Plant natural pollination has a certain evolutionary habit, plants in the process of introduction and domestication, due to the growth environment has changed, its original pollinator can not accompany the plant migration, plants in the process of adapting to the new environment, may produce changes in fragrance, by changing their own fragrance characteristics to attract pollinators in the new cultivation area to pollinate. For the current stage of worldwide plant introduction based on commercial interests, the lack of natural pollinators of this plant can protect the plant from being over-commercially introduced to a certain extent.
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