# Snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus)

**Antirrino**

**Known today as.** *Antirrhinum majus*.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Hung about the neck, “of great benefit for preserving oneself from every harm done by way of hexes” (ch. 10).

## What does modern science say?

Grieve records it as a preservative against witchcraft. No effect is known.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **aureusidin and bracteatin**: aurone pigments
- **antirrhinoside**: an iridoid glycoside
- **cyanidin and pelargonidin glycosides**: 

**Mechanism.** Hung about the neck it delivers nothing; eaten, it is a mild bitter of no account. Its modern distinction is as the plant in which Erwin Baur worked out Mendelian inheritance after 1900 and in which transposable elements were later found, and as the source of the flower-colour genes of molecular genetics.

**Dose.** Safe.

**Standing.** No monograph.

## What lore surrounds it?

“The snapdragon and the herb-betony had the reputation of averting the most subtle forms of witchcraft,” Thiselton-Dyer writes; the plant “was said to have a supernatural influence, and amongst other qualities to possess the power of destroying charms.” Its country name is calf's-snout, from the snouts of animals, and its gaping corolla gave the names “dog's-mouth, rabbit's-mouth, and lion's-snap.”

Grieve: “It was valued in olden times like the Toadflax as a preservative against witchcraft,” and the small snapdragon is the Calf's Snout, Orontium, which Dodonaeus took from “an old mediaeval generic name” for the plant.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Gives the antirrhinum or anarrhinon, the lychnis agria, as a plant like flax, without a root, with a flower like the hyacinth and “a seed similar in form to the muzzle of a calf”; “according to what the magicians say, persons who rub themselves with this plant improve their personal appearance thereby; and they may ensure themselves against all noxious substances and poisons, by wearing it as a bracelet.”

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 25.80, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Snapdragon.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/s/snapdr58.html
- Schwarz-Sommer, Z., et al. (2003). “*Antirrhinum majus*: a model plant for molecular genetics.” *Nature Reviews Genetics* 4.

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*Snapdragon.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/snapdragon

Historical description, not medical advice.