Bachelor’s buttons

Bachelor’s buttons (Tanacetum parthenium L.), also known as featherfew, is a medicinal, aromatic, herbaceous perennial.
Originally from the Balkans, nowadays it is widely spread across many parts of the world, and is cultivated in gardens and vegetable patches as well as growing as an escaped plant that has “gone wild”.
This plant belongs to the daisy family and its flowers are similar to those of camomile, with a white corolla and a yellow button. The leaves are used for medicinal purposes, above all for soothing fevers, treating headaches, arthritis and digestive problems.
The essence of the plant as a whole is very strong and it has a very bitter taste. In the gardens at the Alhambra and Generalife, where it has been part of the scenery for many, many years, it produces large amounts of flowers, which last for months from June to December and reach their ornamental peak in October.