COMMON TANSY. Io8 



Common Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare). 



Time was when every cottage garden and every kitchen 

 garden had its clump of Tansy, for it was a valued item in the 

 housewife's pharmacopoeia, and was all but invaluable in 

 cookery. A belief is entertained by some botanists that the 

 Tansy-plants growing wild in waste places by field and roadside 

 throughout the country are garden escapes, or their descendants, 

 that have become naturalized. 



The Tansy is a perennial, with creeping rootstock, from 

 which arise beautiful broad feathery radical leaves and 

 flowering stems. The leaves are very deeply divided in a 

 pinnate or bi-pinnate manner, the segments , toothed. The 

 angled stem reaches a height of about two feet, and then 

 branches off into a corymb of flower-heads. Each flower-head 

 is enclosed in a half-rounded involucre of leathery bracts. 

 There is an outer row of ray-florets, but they are very short, 

 and of the same dull yellow colour as the disk-florets ; they 

 are pistillate only, whilst the disk-florets are all staminate. 

 Flowers during August and September. 



All parts of the plant give off a strong aromatic scent when 

 touched or handled, and the taste is exceedingly bitter, a 

 quality which caused it to be used as a stomachic tonic and a 

 vermifuge. 



This is the only British species of the genus, whose name is 

 said to be a corruption of Athanasia deathless ; but probably 

 it is not so derived. 



