Spikenard

Spikenard, or NARD (Gr. Nardos), a perfume highly prized by the ancients, and used both in baths and at feasts. It was brought from India, and was very costly. The plant which produces it is the Nardostachys Jatamansi, a small plant of the natural order Valerianaceæ, a native of the Himalaya Mountains of the north of India, and found at least as far south as the Deccan. The odour is not, however, generally agreeable to Europeans. Spikenard is popularly believed to have the power of promoting the growth and blackness of the hair, and to be an antidote for poisons. It is now more used medicinally than as a perfume. The aromatic hairy tap-root, which is from 3 to 12 inches long, sends up many stems with little spikes of purple flowers, which have four stamens. The name spikenard was given by the ancients to many perfumes used as substitutes for the true or Indian spikenard, some of which were derived from the roots of plants of the same natural order, the kind called Gallic or Celtic spikenard from those of Valeriana celtica and V. salicina, which are still used in the East for perfuming baths, and that called Cretan spikenard from those of V. tuberosa, and V. Phu. All of these grow on the Alps and other mountains of the south of Europe, and the peasantry of Styria and Carinthia collect them from rocks on the borders of perpetual snow. They are tied in bundles, and sold at a very low price to merchants, who sell them at a great profit in Turkey and Egypt, from which a proportion is transmitted even to India.