What is an herb?

"For generations the herb garden has provided rich and poor alike with food, medicine, fragrance, and flowers and foliage to make life even more beautiful.

"With all their diversity, herbs are not easy to define. If you look up the definition of herb in 'Webster's Dictionary, herbs are defined as herbaceous plants with soft stems, and do not develop woody stems. Herb gardeners do not take this definition literally, or they would not be growing woody plants like rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, even roses, or trees like black birch or ginkgo.

"A more encompassing and widely accepted definition of an herb is a plant whose roots, stems, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, or seed pods are valued for their medicinal, savory, and aromatic quality. But there is ambiguity here as well. What about vegetables? They are used for their flavor and healthful benefits. What about plants without a practical use, but are valued for their historical or sentimental significance? Does this not include most of the plants that are grown? We find that we could spend a large amount of our time enjoying this wide, wide variety of herbs. One can find a new plant and new use for that plant nearly every day."

- From Grand Oak Herb Farm flyer

Written by one of the Hargroves (Beulah?)

What is an herb?

"If you can cook with it; garnish a salad with it; soothe a burn or scratch with it; make a tea from it; soak in the tub with it; perfume your sheets with it; kill a bug with it; make a potpourri, sachet, wreath, or something else good smelling with it; weave, dye, or spin something with it; scour pots or wash with it; worm your pet with it; formulate oils and lotions to beautify your body with it; cast a spell with it; or make abig mess involving a glue gun, wheat stalks and raffia with it --- it's an herb."

- Rob Proctor and David Macke, from Herbs in the Garden

"the definition of herb"

So many definitions for herbs - we call them useful plants, but those uses cover the gamut. One aspect of herbs are their associations, as in the language of flowers or the symbolism of certain plants. Certain orchids can be considered herbs: there is the orchid source of vanilla bean pods (a culinary herb), and the orchids that scent perfume (fragrant herbs).



My orchid is an un-named Paph. A tropical lady's slipper type orchid. A nutty perfesser orchid collector crossed two plants with yard long names: Paphiopedilum oberhausens diament x P. rothschildianum 'Charlesbourg', and while he was off on a collecting expedition, his greenhouse sitter took us on a tour of his greenhouse.
Given to me as a tiny seedling that day, it has bloomed twice in two years, the first time with one stalk, currently with two. Not culinary or fragrant, it is an herb of remembrance... I look at it and remember the cold winter morning years ago when some gardening friends stepped together into a humid warm greenhouse and were simply amazed.