RADIX GLYCYRRHIZÆ.
Radix Liquiritiæ; Liquorice Root; F. Réglisse; G. Süssholz, Lakritzwurzel.
Botanical Origin—Glycyrrhiza glabra L., a plant which under several well marked varieties[716] is found over an immense extent of the warmer regions of Europe, spreading thence eastward into Central Asia. The root used in medicine is derived from two principal Varieties, namely:—
α. typica—Nearly glabrous, leaves glutinous beneath, divisions of the calyx linear-lanceolate often a little longer than the tube, corolla purplish blue, legume glabrous, 3-6 seeded. It is indigenous to Portugal, Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, Greece, Crimea, the Caucasian Provinces and Northern Persia; and is cultivated in England, France and Germany.
γ. glandulifera (G. glandulifera W.K.)—Stems more or less pubescent or roughly glandular, leaves often glandular beneath, legume sparsely or densely echinate-glandular, many-seeded, or short and 2-3 seeded. It occurs in Hungary, Galicia, Central and Southern Russia, Crimea, Asia Minor, Armenia, Siberia, Persia, Turkestan and Afghanistan.
G. glabra L. has long, stout, perennial roots, and erect, herbaceous annual stems. In var. α., the plant throws out long stolons which run horizontally at some distance below the surface of the ground.
History—Theophrastus[717] in commenting on the taste of different roots (3rd cent. b.c.) instances the sweet Scythian root which grows in the neighbourhood of the lake Mæotis (Sea of Azov), and is good for asthma, dry cough and all pectoral diseases,—an allusion unquestionably to liquorice. Dioscorides,[718] who calls the plant γλυκιῤρίζη, notices its glutinous leaves and purplish flowers, but as he describes the pods to be in balls resembling those of the plane, and the roots to be sub-austere (ὑπόστρυϕνοι) as well as sweet, it is possible he had in view Glycyrrhiza echinata L. as well as G. glabra.
Roman writers, as Celsus and Scribonius Largus, mention liquorice as Radix dulcis. Pliny, who describes it as a native of Cilicia and Pontus, makes no allusion to it growing in Italy.
The cultivation of liquorice in Europe does not date from a very remote period, as we conclude from the absence of the name in early mediæval lists of plants. It is, for instance, not enumerated among the plants which Charlemagne ordered (a.d. 812) to be introduced from Italy into Central Europe;[719] nor among the herbs of the convent gardens as described by Walafridus Strabus,[720] abbot of Reichenau, lake of Constance, in the 9th century; nor yet in the copious list of herbs contained in the vocabulary of Alfric, archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century.[721]
On the other hand, liquorice is described as being cultivated in Italy by Piero de’ Crescenzi[722] of Bologna, who lived in the 13th century. The cultivation of the plant in the north of England existed at the close of the 16th century, but how much earlier we have not been able to trace.