Formerly used as a love charm was dragon’s blood: a red resin extracted from the fruit of a palm tree called botanically calamus draco. Cast into a fire, dragon’s blood was believed, when accompanied by a binding spell in the form of a rhyming couplet, to induce an errant lover to return to the object of his passion.
Dog-stones, tubers of the orchis species, are shaped like the testiculi canis, and hence are so called. At one time this plant was assumed to have an amatory virtue.
In the case of women, darnel grass was considered an amatory provocation, when mixed with barley meal, myrrh, and frankincense.
The comparatively innocuous cucumber, used domestically in salads, has sometimes been credited, mainly for its phallic shape, with venereal properties.
In the Orient, the aromatic plant cumin, which is used as a condiment, is also considered aphrodisiacally. So with the pungent berry cubeb, native to Java, and used in cooking and medicinally.