Vitex agnus

Vitex agnus-castus

Family: Verbenaceae
Common name: chaste tree, hemp tree, monk’s pepper tree
Features: Fragrant flowers, aromatic foliage, edible seeds
Description: A shrub or small tree, to 10-20 feet, with strongly aromatic, greyish, pinnate foliage,(leaflets 5-7) and racemes of fragrant, lilac flowers. Used medicinally and in basketry.
Location: native to southern Europe and western Asia.

Culture: Easy to grow in fertile, well drained soil. Not hard to grow in almost any soil that has good drainage! Even tolerant of salt drift. The chaste tree can take care of itself admirably, but can be pushed along with fertilizer and mulching around the plant. If pruning is desired to control the size, it should be done in winter, since blooms form on new wood. It is hardly ever disturbed by pests or disease, but is susceptible to mushroom root rot and nematodes.
Usage: As a specimen flowering tree. As part of a mixed border if kept pruned to shrub size. Leaves have medicinal use, and seeds can be used for seasoning.

Chaste Tree - Vitex agnus-castus

by Steven Foster
(short fragment)

For over 2500 years chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus) has been used for gynecological conditions since the days of Hippocrates. With a rich traditional of use, modern research supports historical wisdom, and has made chaste tree fruit preparations a phytomedicine of choice by European gynecologists for treatment of various menstrual disorders, PMS, and other conditions.

Chaste tree was associated with ancient Greek festivals. In the Thesmophoria, a festival held in honor of Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, fertility and marriage, women (who remained "chaste" during the festival), used chaste tree blossoms for adornment, while bows of twigs and leaves, were strewn around Demeter's temple during the festival.

In Rome, vestal virgins carried twigs of chaste tree as a symbol of chastity. According to Greek mythology, Hera, sister and wife of Zeus, regarded as protectress of marriage, was born under a chaste tree. Ancient traditions associating the shrub with chastity were adopted in Christian ritual. Novitiates entering a monastery walked on a path strewn with the blossoms of the tree, a ritual that continues to the present day in some regions of Italy.

The shrub's ancient association with chastity led to later use of the fruits as an "anaphrodisiac," quieting the desires of the flesh, especially of celibate clergy. "These seeds have been celebrated as antiaphrodisiacs, and were formerly much used by monks for allaying the venereal appetite; but experience does not warrant their having any such virtues," wrote Andrew Duncan in the 1789 edition of the Edinburgh Dispensatory...

Robert John Thorton in his 1814 Family Herbal put it more eloquently, "As there are provocatives to procreations, as shell-fish, eggs, and roots of orchises made into salep for the male, and spare dict and use of steel for the female, so it is possible the chaste tree may have a contrary effect; and hence the seeds have been called Piper monachorum (Monk's pepper), who flew to them when they found the spirit to be willing, but the flesh weak."...