The plant was found far from its natural habitat.
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Turkish scientists announced that they managed to find a sylph – a plant that was considered lost for more than 2000 years, reports National Geographic. The ancient Greeks and Romans considered it a “medicine for all diseases”.
Doctors of the ancient world used sylphium to treat all diseases: from warts to stomach aches. And Roman cooks used it as a universal seasoning. During the reign of Julius Caesar, thousands of kilograms of the plant were stored together with gold in the imperial treasuries of Rome, and sylphia seedlings were valued on a par with silver.
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< p>But seven hundred years after the documentation of the fact that the plant grows on the coast of Cyrenaica, on the territory of modern Libya, the plant disappeared. The Roman historian and writer Pliny the Elder in the first century of our era wrote that “only one stalk was found, and it was presented to Emperor Neuron”.
For centuries, botanists have tried to find this plant, but always to no avail. Some researchers considered the sylph as the world's first example of an extinct species, as well as how human appetite can destroy an entire species of plants.
But Mahmut Mysky from Istanbul University believes that he managed to find a plant, after thousands of years, after it disappeared from the books, and 1.3 thousand kilometers from its natural habitat. According to the scientist, Ferula drudeana, growing on Mount Hasan in Turkey, is a long-forgotten plant.
The scientist first saw Ferula drudeana 38 years ago, after which he received a grant to study the plants of this family. According to Myska, the plant was found in two regions of Turkey, which were previously inhabited by the ancient Greeks. In addition, the scientist compared the image of Ferula drudeana with drawings in ancient texts and coins.
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The scientist also studied the root extract of the plant and identified 30 secondary metabolites – substances that, although they do not contribute to the main activity, help plant to grow or multiply, nevertheless give some kind of selective advantage. Among the compounds, many of which have anti-cancer, anti-pregnancy and anti-inflammatory properties, there is shiobunone, which acts on the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors of the brain and can contribute to the intoxicating smell of the plant. Mysky believes that future analyzes of the plant will reveal the existence of dozens of compounds of medical interest that have not yet been identified.
