THYME
Garden thyme (Thymus vulgaris).
French, Thym; German, Thyman.
Thyme teucrium marum and Thyme pallium. It is a plant of the genus thymus, a humble, half-shrubby plant of the natural order labiatæ (mint family); Latin, thymus incense, thus indicating its former use on sacrificial altars. It is said to have made the bed in the stable at Bethlehem and was used in many charms and incantations. “It is ever the bee’s alluring time,” and it was wild thyme which gave the famed flavor to the honey of Mount Hymettus. Among the Greeks thyme denoted graceful elegance of the Attic style. To smell of thyme was an expression of praise applied to those whose style was admirable. In the days of chivalry, peradventure, very highly noted ladies used to embroider their knightly heroes’ scarfs with the figure of a bee hovering about a sprig of thyme, the bees as the belles of thyme. Early lists of English plants give no name with which it can certainly be identified. It grows from six inches to one foot high and has a two-lipped calyx and four diverging stamens and is clothed with a hoary down, with narrow, almost elliptical leaves with edges turned in. It may have many stems slightly indented in pairs, standing erect upon short petioles or decumbent at the base, which bear very small ovate leaves, which are sharp-pointed, while those of the whorls are blunt. The flowers are of a pale purple or whitish or reddish color, which grow in separate whorls, six in a whorl. It flowers from May until August and is a native of Europe and especially of Southern France. It is commonly found growing on dry hills and is cultivated in gardens on account of its fragrance. It has a pungent, aromatic property and is largely used as a seasoning for soups, sauces, etc. From it is also distilled the oil of thyme, which is considerably used in veterinary practice and for perfumery, and often passes as oil of organum. The tea of thyme is also used for nervous habits. The wild creeping thyme, or mother of thyme, is T. serpillum, a less erect plant which has a procumbent stem with many branches from two to three feet long, small entire oval leaves and purplish flowers, arranged in whorls, which are united in a dense terminal leafy head. This variety is abundant on hills and mountains in Great Britain and in all parts of Europe and the north of Asia, between forty and fifty varieties being described. It is less fragrant than garden thyme, but both species have the same aromatic essential oil.
T. serpillum has procumbent stems, numerous short ascending branches, ending in short, loose, leafy, whorled flower spikes, the leaves being egg-shaped and narrow and more or less fringed toward the bottom, those of the flower spikes being similar but smaller. There are two forms—T. en serpillum, with flowering branches, ascending from shoots, which are barren at the tip in one head, and the upper lip of the corolla oblong; and T. chamoedrys, in which all the branches ascend from the crown of the root stalk with whorls in many axillary heads and a short and broad upper lip to the corolla. The flowering branches, herba thymi and herba serpylli, are used in medicine as a powerful stimulant.
The lemon thyme, or lemon-scented thyme of our gardens, is regarded as a variety of thyme serpyllum known as citratus or citriodrus, which is generally a hardy and very dwarfed traveling evergreen, of lower growth than the common garden thyme. No species of thyme is indigenous in America. Seed should be sown in drills or broadcast in March or April, in light, fine earth and raked in lightly. The young plants are transplanted in the summer when from two to three inches high. After they are from three to five inches in growth, they should be thinned out to about ten inches apart. Thyme is also propagated by slips of the branching shoots in the spring or early autumn, but more especially by sections of the brush or by removing rooted branches.
The harvesting takes place in August by cutting the plants rather closely down with a very sharp sickle. The seed should be dried on cloth, rubbed out clean, and preserved in a dry place for sowing the following year. In using the herb for distillation it should not be dried, but the crop gathered each day should be put in the still at once.