Herb cabinet
Licorice
Glycyrrhiza glabra. A symbolic and practical entry, not a medical monograph.
Licorice is a perennial legume with pinnate leaves, small pale purple to blue pea-flowers, and seed pods, above a deep system of woody runners. The dried root is yellow-brown inside and intensely sweet. The plant in leaf can be overlooked as 'some vetch' if you have never grown it. This description is not a sufficient identification key.
Names
| Common name | Licorice |
| Botanical name | Glycyrrhiza glabra |
| Family | Fabaceae |
| Also called | liquorice, sweet root |
| Uncertainty | Moderate. Chinese licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis) is a different species. Most black candy called licorice is flavored with anise and contains no root at all. |
| Habitat and source | Glycyrrhiza glabra is native from the Mediterranean eastward and has been cultivated for the root in warm, deep soils. It does not behave like a tidy windowsill herb; the runners travel. |
Symbolic correspondences
| Tag | Attribution |
|---|---|
| Element | Water |
| Planet | Mercury |
| Themes | a sweeter no · kindness with a spine · the root unboiled · enough sweetness |
Folklore and history
Culpeper gave licorice to Mercury and repeated the long medical fame of the root, a fame already old when Dioscorides listed it. Grieve describes cultivation and the commerce in sticks of root, and she repeats cautions that large or long use was not harmless even in the language of her day. That documentary line, root as trade goods and as a drug of the old pharmacopoeia, is the history. It is not an invitation to brew a blood-pressure experiment.
The legend, sticky as the candy aisle, is that sweetness is always safe and that a charming dose is a cure. Much 'licorice' candy never met the plant. Real root contains glycyrrhizin, which can raise blood pressure and lower potassium when people take too much of it, a fact from modern toxicology rather than from a fairy tale. On this altar a dry piece of root means a refusal that does not humiliate anyone: you may be sweet and still say no. You do not have to eat the symbol to mean it.
Safety
Ritual applications
- A dry stick of root on a dish as a token of a gracious refusal
- A written no folded under the dish, not a potion
- A reminder that sweetness does not obligate you to comply
An original working
The Sweetened No
To practice one clear refusal that stays kind, without sweetening yourself into saying yes.
Timing: Before you answer a request you already know you should decline, or on a quiet evening when you rehearse the sentence.
- Material: A small piece of dried licorice root, kept whole
- Material: A saucer
- Material: Paper and a pen
- Material: An envelope
- Material: A high shelf away from children and pets
- 1Place the root on the saucer. Do not boil it, soak it, or nibble it as part of the working.
- 2Write the request in one line, and write your refusal in one or two sentences you could actually say aloud.
- 3Read the words. Check that the refusal binds only your own yes, not another person's feelings or future.
- 4Fold the paper and put it in the envelope. Set the envelope under the saucer for one night if you need the delay, or take it with you if the answer must go today.
- 5Say the refusal to the person, or send it, without adding three apologies that cancel it.
- 6Move the root to the high shelf in a labeled tin, still unbrewed, or throw it away if keeping it tempts you to make tea.
I can be kind and still decline. Sweetness is not a debt I pay with my body. This no is complete without a curse behind it.
Close. Do not compost the root where a pet might chew it, and do not simmer it when the working is over. Bin it or keep it dry, labeled, and out of reach. Tear up the paper once the refusal has been delivered.
A practical action. Send the refusal today, in the sentences you already wrote, and do not reopen the negotiation alone at midnight.
Substitutions
- A written refusal and a piece of ordinary grocery anise candy eaten as candy, not as root and not as medicine
- A cinnamon stick on the saucer if you cannot safely keep licorice in the house
Growing and sourcing
Licorice wants deep, loose soil and a long warm season, and its runners will claim more bed than a beginner expects. Most people should meet it as a bought stick of root, not as a garden project, and even then should not brew it from this page.
Beginner questions
- Can licorice tea lower my blood pressure? No. Real root can raise blood pressure and lower potassium, and this page does not teach a tea.
- Did Culpeper associate it with Mercury? Yes. He assigned licorice to Mercury.
- Is black candy the same as the root? Often no. Many candies are anise flavor with no Glycyrrhiza in them at all.