by Chris Westerley

Created on: December 18, 2009   Last Updated: December 20, 2009

ORIGINS AND EARLIEST USE OF ASPARAGUS

More than 100 species of asparagus are known worldwide. Our cultivated variety (Asparagus officinalis) originates from the eastern Mediterranean region.  

Charred plant remains discovered at a group of Late Palaeolithic sites in Wadi Kubbaniya, near Aswan, Egypt, included wild asparagus seeds (discovered by Gordon Hillman, as cited by Prof. Fred Wendorf and colleagues). This suggests that asparagus was being used as a food in the Nile Valley 20,000 years ago.

The Ancient Egyptians consumed, and perhaps cultivated, asparagus. A more controversial matter is whether asparagus is pictured within the Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Some historians claim it is and that this indicates the cultivation of asparagus in Egypt 5000 years ago and also its use as an offering to the gods. Others maintain that the representation is actually of bundles of papyrus stalks.

Asparagus cochinchinensis (tian men dong) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 2000 years as a treatment for inflammatory diseases. A recent scientific study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology provides some evidence for an anti-inflammatory effect. 

ANCIENT GREECE

Wild asparagus is thinner and darker than garden asparagus and somewhat bitter. It was prized by the ancient Greeks for its medicinal and gastronomic qualities.

Hippocrates, in the fifth century BC, used it to treat diarrhea, toothache, dysentery, lumbago and urinary tract disease.

Plutarch (50-125 AD) recorded:
“In Boeotia they dress up the bride with a chaplet of asparagus, for as the asparagus gives most excellent fruit from a thorny stalk, so the bride, by not being too reluctant and coy in the first approaches, will make the married state more agreeable and pleasant.” The belief in ancient times that asparagus is an aphrodisiac may also have been a basis for this tradition.

The Greeks gave asparagus its name, possibly taking it from the Persian “sparag” meaning sprout or shoot.

ANCIENT ROME

The Romans were the first to develop garden varieties of asparagus. Cato in his “De Agricultura” (160 BC) gives instructions on cultivation. 

Pliny the Elder, in his “Natural History” (57 AD)  mentions wine made from asparagus (Book 14, chapter 19) and the belief of the Greeks that “if rams' horns are pounded, and then buried in the ground, asparagus will come up.” (Book 19, chapter 42).

Cultivation did not please him:

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