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Tanacetum vulgare
Also called Common tansy, Golden Buttons, Garden Tansy, Tasny
Tansy is a clump-forming perennial herb with fern-like leaves and button-like yellow flowers in summer, native to temperate Europe and Asia and invasive in some regions. It is grown mainly as a hardy, low-maintenance garden perennial and for historical herbal use.
Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is a perennial, herbaceous flowering plant in the genus Tanacetum in the family Asteraceae, native to temperate Europe and Asia. It has been introduced to other parts of the world, including Australia and North and South America, and in some areas has become invasive. It is also known as common tansy, bitter buttons, cow bitter, or golden buttons. The Latin word vulgare means "common".
The ancient Greeks may have been the first to cultivate it as a medicinal herb. In the sixteenth century it was considered to be "necessary for a garden" in England.
Many tansy species contain a volatile oil which can cause contact dermatitis in sensitive individuals. If taken internally, toxic metabolites are produced as the oil is broken down in the liver and digestive tract. It is highly toxic to internal parasites, and for centuries tansy tea has been prescribed by herbalists to expel worms. Tansy is an effective insecticide and is highly toxic to arthropods. Because it contains thujone, the U.S. FDA limits the use of tansy to alcoholic beverages, and the final product must be thujone-free. Blue tansy (Vogtia annua, syn. Tanacetum annuum) is often confused with common tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) but the former produces an essential oil that is completely different chemically as it contains no thujone and high amounts of chamazulene making the oil dark blue in colour, giving rise to its common name of Blue Tansy Oil.
Tansy is native to Eurasia; it is native in almost all parts of Europe, including Great Britain, though introduced in Iceland, Ireland, and Portugal. It is absent from Siberia and from some of the Mediterranean islands; in Asia, it is native south to Turkey, Kazakhstan, northern China, Korea, and Japan, but absent further south.
Tansy was formerly used as a flavouring for puddings and omelettes, but is now almost unknown, except in Cork, where it is used in a sauce to accompany drisheens. The herbalist John Gerard (c. 1545–1612) noted that tansy was well known as "pleasant in taste", and he recommends tansy sweetmeats as "an especial thing against the gout, if every day for a certain space a reasonable quantitie thereof be eaten fasting." In Yorkshire, tansy and caraway seeds were traditionally used in biscuits served at funerals.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tansy by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
