In Tennyson's The Lotos-Eaters, the moly is coupled with the amaranth ('propt on beds of amaranth and moly').Symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations, and delusions – this description of 'moly' fits the snowdrop, a flower of the region that contains galantamine, which is an anticholinesterase and can therefore counteract anticholinergics.

Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally but refers to anticholinergic intoxication.

He shows that the 'difficulty of pulling up' the plant is not a merely physical one, but rather connected with the peculiar powers claimed by magicians. Henry, who illustrates the Homeric account by passages in the Paris and Leiden magical papyri, and argues that moly is probably a magical name, derived perhaps from Phoenician or Egyptian sources, for a plant which cannot be certainly identified. Victor Bérard relying partly on a Semitic root, prefers the Atriplex halimus ( atriplex, a Latin form of Greek ἀτράφαξυς, and ἅλιμος, marine), order Chenopodiaceae, a herb or low shrub common on the south European coasts. The flowers are white with green stripes. Philippe Champault decides in favour of the Peganum harmala (of the order Rutaceae), the Syrian or African rue (Greek πἠγανον), from the husks of which the vegetable alkaloid harmaline is extracted. Some also believe that it may have been Allium moly, instead, which is named after the mythical herb. Kurt Sprengel believed that the plant is identical with Allium nigrum as Homer describes it. There has been much controversy as to the identification. So Ovid describes in book 14 of his Metamorphoses: 'A white bloom with a root of black'. Homer also describes Moly by saying 'The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk the gods call it Moly, Dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods. A derivation of the name was given, from the 'hard' (Greek malos) combat with the Giant. In this description the flower had a black root, for the colour of the blood of the slain Giant, and a white flower, either for the white Sun that killed him, or the fact that Circe grew pale of terror. These friends came together with him from the island Aeolus after they escaped from the Laestrygonians.Īccording to the 'New History' of Ptolemy Hephaestion (according to Photius) and Eustathius, the plant mentioned by Homer grew from the blood of the Giant Picolous killed on Circe's island, by Helios, father and ally of Circe, when the Giant tried to attack Circe. In Homer's Odyssey, Hermes gave this herb to Odysseus to protect him from Circe's poison and magic when he went to her palace to rescue his friends.

Magic flowers in mythology