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Thyme is a spice, but from ancient times to the present it is more than just a spice!
Thyme is the "flower of courage", legend has it that it is the Greek goddess Aphrodite fell into the tears of the mortal world because of pity for the suffering of war, then the thyme was given a symbol of "courage and vitality", medieval Europe, whenever the knight went out on a campaign, the beloved person in the center of the home would put a thyme in the armor, hoping that he would go out with courage and vitality and return safely.
Thyme is the "paradise of breaking dawn", thyme is very fragrant, but what kind of incense it is, for friends who have not eaten or smelled it is really difficult to use words to describe, but a European poet in the 16th century described the taste of thyme in words, he said that the taste of thyme is the paradise of dawn.
Thyme is a "wild spice", more than 2,000 years of stewing and roasting, thyme enriches the taste of many dishes, it does not cover the delicious ingredients, does not hide the taste of other spices, gentle and elegant after more than 2,000 years is still the most common "wild spice" in Western food. And don't think that thyme is just a foreign spice, in fact, the Song and Yuan dynasties have become a table dish for Chinese, and the current "ground pepper mutton" that is still coveted in the mountains and Shaanxi regions is still coveted to understand, and the lamb that is removed by thyme is fragrant.
Fans and friends who are familiar with Inon know that as an agricultural person, I have a special love for relatively small spice crops, and I really haven't written about spices for a long time. Today, Inon will take everyone to understand thyme in depth, talk about its past and past, and talk about its present and future. Look at this spice that we have used for more than 2,000 years, why is it only grown on a large scale in European countries in the last 20 years? Discuss whether it is possible for it to become a domestic field crop under the highlight of the economic value of agriculture.
Thyme, also known as ground pepper, musk herb, ground mountain pepper, nine-story tower, etc., is a perennial semi-shrub of the thyme genus in the family Lipaceae, native to the Mediterranean region (the Mediterranean sea always loves long vanilla), and is now widely distributed in Europe, Asia and northern Africa. The general plant science article should introduce the morphological characteristics of thyme at this time, but we are agricultural science popularization, so it is better to write it out in the view of Inong than to put it out, plus some of the current artificial cultivation of passion grass varieties for garden ornamentation, look very "peculiar", it is not easy to say the specific morphological characteristics.
There are many wild species of thyme, and it is difficult to distinguish between the similarities and forms of wild species, so it is accurate to say that the plants of the genus Thyme should be introduced by Inonon in this article (they can basically make spices), not specific to which thyme species. Thyme genus is a very large family, and continues to be huge, according to the agricultural school when the botany classified less than 400 species of thyme, because to write this article specifically asked the "old pedantic" classmates engaged in plant classification, according to her thyme genus has more than 450 species, distributed in China there are about 17 species (if you count the two varieties is 19 species), wild populations are mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Gansu, Hebei, Shandong and other places.
In the early days, thyme was a garden ornamental crop, and the Greeks would also burn some dried thyme for blessing when the temple was sacrificed. It was used as a vegetable and spice about 2,000 years ago (thyme may have been used earlier, but there are documented accounts of its use during the Persian Empire). Making spices and vegetables is the duty of passion herbs, and it is also acceptable to make incense, but Inon has to tell everyone that thyme, like cumin introduced in Inon's early articles, was also used by the Egyptians for mummy embalming, hoping that everyone would not have a shadow when sprinkling spices in the roast meat.
With the widespread adoption of thyme as a spice on the European continent, it began to appear in European markets, although it was still a weed (or small-scale artificial cultivation), but it was indeed sold as a farm product. "Are you going to Scarborough Market?" Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Say hello to a girl there on my behalf. Ask her to make me a linen garment..." In the old English folk song "Scarborough Bazaar", the rugged Vikings remember their lovers and remember the thyme sold at the bazaar.
Thyme is a foreign spice for most Chinese, but in fact, it is not foreign at all, and it is very grounded, and it has not escaped the "end of being able to eat and be medicinal" (this is a joke, thyme is indeed a Chinese herbal medicine material recorded in many orthodox pharmacy classics in ancient and modern China). The time when the ancients in China ate thyme as a spice and vegetable can be traced back to the Song and Yuan dynasties. The Yuan Dynasty literary scholar Xu Youren wrote in the "Shangjing Ten Yong Qijiu Yongdi Pepper" that "frozen rain induces flowers to purple, and light wind scatters wild incense." The thorny sand tip leaves are thin and long. Chu Ke harvested the wrap, Xi Tong picked up the basket. Cooking for grass utensils, tuning Erfei Liang. "It has become the documentary evidence of the ancient people's consumption of thyme in China." By the time of the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen wrote down in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" that "the taste is slightly spicy, the scholar boils the mutton, fragrant and beautiful" to tell us, thyme stewed lamb incense.
In fact, this answer is very simple, two reasons, one of which is related to the biological characteristics of thyme, but it is not that it is not easy to grow, and it is difficult to grow artificially. But its adaptability to the environment is too strong, resistant to diseases and insect pests, drought, cold, barren, can grow in deserts, hills, too easy to plant. The thyme plant is short and has strong reproductive ability, in our vernacular, it starts to string, a bunch of large pieces. Therefore, as a spice or edible or medicinal, it cannot be said that it is inexhaustible, but at least the wild one is enough to eat. The second is related to its use, in the early years it was only spices, vegetables and Chinese medicinal materials, in other words, its agricultural value is only for food, a large piece of wild, wild to some extent by consumers to name natural health, so there is little income after large-scale planting, who will plant ah!
The answer is also very simple, that is, the economic value is higher, and there is money to be made by planting it. The agricultural value of thyme as a crop has begun to stand out in the process of the continuation of the agricultural industry chain in recent years, and it is said that farmers engaged in thyme cultivation in European countries have a lot of benefits. In recent years, the prominence of the economic value of thyme lies mainly in the extraction of thyme essential oil, which can be widely used in food, medicine, beauty and other industries.
Some friends may ask, Inon, you just said that the wild is inexhaustible, and the extraction of essential oils can also be used wild, why do you have to invest human and financial resources to plant? This is because thyme essential oil is very complex, including thymol, vitex thymol, geraniol, olive and other more than 90 volatile substances, and not only the content of each wild thyme variety is not the same, that is, the same variety of wild thyme, due to the influence of various external factors are also very different. The market demand for thyme essential oil has different requirements depending on the use. Therefore, artificial breeding containing specific volatile substances can be stable inheritance is the most economical method. So the scale was planted.
For this problem, Inon personally feels that the time has not yet come, at least not yet to the time for the farmer's friends to plant themselves. In recent years, there have indeed been relevant agricultural experts doing research in this area, and have also carried out introduction and cultivation, but it is still mostly a small-scale experimental state, and there is no large-scale planting and production at present, and it is not yet mature. In addition, although china's market has a certain demand for thyme essential oil, the relative demand is small, and a small amount of imports can be fully satisfied. There is also a current domestic demand for thyme horticultural demand, because horticultural varieties are mostly introduced abroad, the lack of self-breeding varieties, it is difficult to become a scale.
However, with the development of agriculture, the increase in market demand, it may be in the near future, planting thyme may have a better yield. Whoever takes the first step may better occupy the market in the future, but for the "agricultural people" who take this first step, Accordingong hopes to be an agricultural enterprise with a whole agricultural industry chain such as research, planting, and market development, and then drive the farmers at the production end of the planting to get rich.
At present, Chinese people eat less and use less for thyme, and the thyme that can be touched on the surface may only be planted on the balcony of the "potted flowers". In fact, this is not the case, because although the large-scale cultivation of domestic thyme still has some way to go, the wild thyme distributed in the poor soil areas in China silently contributes to us. It is a good honey source crop, this beekeeper friend should know; it is an antibacterial herb in the production area, the residents of this production area should know; it is also the natural feed of the pastoral area, this herder friend should know; more importantly, it is also an important vegetation for windproof and sand fixation to improve the desert, which we should all know. Therefore, even if the domestic thyme is not commercialized, even if it cannot become the mainstream flavoring spice in China, we cannot study it less and attach less importance to it. Finally, I hope that one day, thyme will be able to "incense" all the places in the country that need it.
Detailed, welcome to discuss!