Jean Nicot and l’herbe à la Reine

Jean Nicot stayed in Lisbon as the French ambassador from 1547 to 1559 under Henrique II, under king Francis II from 1559 to 1560, and from 1560 to 1574 under Charles IX. In 1559 he was responsible to negotiate the marriage of princess Margaret of Valois to King Sebastian of Portugal. Besides any possible political and diplomatic value, his name is eternalized thanks to the tobacco plant, whose scientific name is Nicotiana tabacum.

Tobacco is a native plant in tropical and subtropical areas of America, and at the time of European colonization it was already spread and in use across the entire continent. Seeds of the plant arrived in Europe in 1559 thanks to transoceanic voyages, and in France in 1556 thanks to André Thevet.

Nicot spread tobacco seeds and leaves from Portugal to the French court for its medicinal properties. Among the many effects of this drug, it seems that the ability to cure headache was particularly appreciated by Caterina de’ Medici and the royal family, earning the plant the name of herbe à la Reine.

That was a great success, to the point that in 1586 the botanist Jaques Dalechamps named the plant Herba nicotiana, later retained by Linnaeus. Eventually, the alkaloid extracted from the plant acquired the name of nicotine. [Silvana Munzi]

Jean Nicot presenting the tobacco plant to Queen Catherine de Medicis and the Grand Prior of the House of Lorraine

The Invasion of the Figs

We already mentioned how plants of economic interest travelled from the New to the Old World in the Early Modern period, spreading through Europe and beyond. In his rutter of Brazil of 1587, Gabriel Soares de Sousa describes two species native to central America, the Indian fig or prickly pear (figueira da India), Opuntia ficus-indica, and Hell’s fig (figueira do inferno) or thornapple, Datura stramonium, which arrived in Portugal onboard transoceanic vessels.

“Monduruqu is neither more nor less than a fig tree that is planted in the gardens of Portugal, which has succulent leaves and that they call the fig tree of India. These have the leaves of a span of length and four fingers width, and a stalk, and the leaves are born on the tips of the others which are all full of thorns as big and hard as needles, and as sharp as they are, and bear fruit on the tips and sides of the leaves that are figs as big as the lampo figs, red on the outside with a thick peel that you don’t eat. It has thousands of white and black kernels, pure white, and black as jet, the flavor of which is very appetizing and fresh and which is created in the areas along the sea.”

Opuntia ficus-indica (Indian fig)

“This herb gives the fruit in bunches full of berries big like hazelnuts all full of beaks, each of these berries has inside a brown grain like a bean, that if mashed unravels producing an oil that is used in candles, and drunk it serves as much as a purge of golden shower, and drunk by colic patients this oil cures their accident soon, the leaves of this herb are very good to relieve wounds, and abscesses.”

Datura stramonium (Devil’s fig)

Of particular interest is how quickly an exotic plant like the Indian fig became commonly planted in Portuguese gardens, considering that less than a century had passed between Columbus’ voyage and the production of Soares de Sousa’s rutter. While Opuntia was consumed as food, Datura was used in traditional medicine and recreationally due to the high level of alkaloids as atropine in all parts of the plant.

Like many other changes brought by the oceanic navigation, the introduction of these two species had a long-lasting and profound impact on the old continent—these two species are considered invasive weeds in temperate climates across the world. Climatic conditions in the Mediterranean Basin were so favorable for the Indian fig that it has become naturalized, becoming part of the vegetation of regions like Southern Italy. [Silvana Munzi & Luana Giurgevich]