Laserwort
By As word of the birth-control wonder-herb spread through ancient Europe, Africa, and Asia, a market for the versatile fennel developed rapidly. The seeds became widely used among the world’s wealthier nations, including the citizens of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and India. By some accounts the silphium seed was also a potent aphrodisiac, a property which considerably compounded its perceived value. The Roman bard Catullus famously alluded to its sexual properties in one of his love poems, where he declared that he and his lover would share as many kisses as there were grains of sand on Cyrene’s silphium shores. More plainly, “We can make love so long as we have silphium.”
. . . The extinction of silphium is now considered to be among humanity’s earliest environmental blunders. If laserwort was indeed more effective than the alternatives, then the bygone birth control is certainly deserving of its glowing reputation. Evidence suggests that the natural world allowed women in antiquity to govern their reproductive lives with far more control than commonly realized, and without the need to resort to senseless abstinence. But as mankind is wont to do, the custodians of this scarce commodity eventually surrendered to greed and short-sightedness, overtaxing the renewable resource until it was hopelessly exhausted.
I suppose, though, if silphium were still around, the Bush administration would have authorized a massive defoliation campaign to rid the world of this abomination, and the anti-“pesticide”/forced pregnancy lobby would be fantasizing about laws to punish laserwort cultivators for the senseless murder of potential humans. Also, my e-mail account would be clotted with truckloads of spam offering me WONDER FENNEL at impossibly low prices.