Bittersweet, the fairy drink
Even in winter, you can get the fresh red berries of the #Solanum dulcamara in nature still against. Both the Dutch name #bitterzoet as the Latin name dulcamara refers to the taste of the berries and of the stem. My standard story on a spice walk is that the plant first tastes bitter, then sweet, and then you don't taste anything anymore because you're dead. I admit, a little exaggerated, but from this nightshade-like family of the very poisonous wolfskers, the berries should not overeat. Ten berries are enough to provoke symptoms of poisoning in small children. More than thirty berries can kill a dog within three hours. Too large a dose of berries causes vomiting, diarrhea, chills all over the body, rashes, swelling and muscle pains.
Medical history
However, until recently this creeper has been used as a medicine. Typical and not accidental, it is mainly the stems that are medicinal, they are less aggressive than the berries and, above all, have a so-called draining or blood-purifying effect. Dodoens already wrote about the herb that the root as a decoction in wine in the morning and in the evening three hours before the meal ingeno men 'den buyck heel ledigh maect ende pisse ghemackelijck'. And 1500 years earlier, Dioscorides told the same story.
According to BroederAloysius, one of the last traditional herbal bookwriters from the beginning of the 20th century, the herb had to be used in 'mucus, syphylis, scrophulen, gout, rheumatism, asthma and especially in venereal diseases'.
And it was even touted and used as a kind of children's candy. In an Almanach of Herbals from 1800 it was called “how-langer-how-rather.” On Walcheren in the Netherlands it was called 'bitterlicorice' and also 'wild licorice was found. In France, the plant bears the same name 'réglisse sauvage'. So it was even nibbled on it as on the root of licorice.
