The Noble Bay

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Bay Recipes:

• Caponata 
• Bay Honey Custard Sauce 
• Mediterranean Bay Butter 

Sidebar: What is that Scent? 

Laurus nobilis. Say it again. It has such a nice ring to it, conjuring fantasies of kings and their subjects and tales of the ancient Olympics. Call it by its homelier name, bay laurel, and it evokes the memory of hot soup on a cold rainy day. How did this magnificent evergreen tree come to be so highly regarded?

The appellation Laurus nobilis is as ancient as it is well deserved. The generic name, Laurus, the family name, Lauraceae, and the common English name, “laurel”, all are derived from the Latin name for the laurel tree. The specific name, nobilis, means “notable” or “renowned”.

Native to the Mediterranean, the tree is known as daphne– in Greece. From the ancient mists of mythology comes the tale of the sun god, Apollo, who fell in love with the nymph Daphne. She remained indifferent; her father resolved the problem by turning her into a laurel tree. From then on, Apollo wore a laurel wreath in remembrance of Daphne, and so the custom began.

The familiar green bay laurel tree connotes honor and glory: the ancient Greeks and Romans crowned their heroes and their scholars with laurel wreaths. Champions of the Olympics, first held in 776 b.c., wore garlands of the fragrant leaves. Roman senators wore laurel chaplets on their heads (though perhaps the purpose was to cover their bald spots, as a latter-day wag has written).

The tree’s common name of bay, as in bay laurel and sweet bay, comes from baie and bacca, the Middle French and Latin words for “berry”, referring to the small purple-black fruits that form on mature trees that have not been heavily pruned.

Early Romans believed bay laurel provided protection from thunder and lightning. While the tree was considered good luck, its death was also thought to be an omen of great disaster. Shakespeare referred to this superstition in the play Richard II when the Captain says: “’Tis thought the King is dead, we will not stay. / The bay trees in our country are all wither’d.” (To a modern gardener, that sounds suspiciously like a lack of rain rather than an omen.)

A Bay By Any Other Name

At least fifteen varieties of L. nobilis are grown in western Europe, and horticulturists in Israel have begun collecting varieties native to that area. Here in southeast Texas, we have grown three cultivars in addition to the species. Willow-Leaf has very long, slender leaves, Aurea’s new growth is a lovely golden color, and Undulata’s leaves have wavy margins. Plants of Undulata frequently show up in the trade labeled as something else.

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