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Rosemary

Rosemary is from the Lamiaceae family. It is a perennial shrubby plant that grows in the Mediterranean basin and the Western and Southern Anatolian coastlines of our country. It is grown as an ornamental and hedge plant in gardens because it can grow up to 2 m tall and does not shed its leaves in winter.

The plant's trunk is square-sectioned and green, but it becomes woody in its second year. Its needle-like, long leaves, about 2 cm long, are shiny dark green on top and gray underneath. These leaves curl inward. Its small flowers, which bloom throughout the summer, are blue or purple. Its seeds are small, oily and yellow-brown.

The rosemary plant is propagated by seeds or, since it grows slowly, by stem cuttings or by dipping methods. Among the volatile oils that rosemary contains are mainly borneol, linalool, camphene, cineole and camphor, and the plant also contains tannin, resin and other effective substances. For this reason, rosemary, whose leaves and thin shoots have a very pleasant smell, is added to salads when fresh, and to meat dishes and other foods when dried as a spice.

It contains ethereal oil (consisting of cineole, a-pinene, bornylacetate, camphene, caryophyllene, camphor and other terpenes), tannins, bitterness, resin, rosmaricin alkaloid, ursul and rosmarin acid, etc.