Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
Silphium

Silphium

1 9.9
A tall North American plant with large yellow flower heads
  • noun
  • /ˈsɪlfiəm/
  • Specialized
translation icon : Silphium
  • Cyrene's most lucrative export, however, was the plant silphium, a type of giant fennel that was featured on its coins.
  • Silphium stalks

Examples

  • In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder wrote that silphium was good for soreness of the windpipe, bruises, and scrofulous.

    Academic text (2005)

  • I want to say goodbye to all that: horses, silphium, chariots, silphium stalks, steeple-chasers, silphium leaves, fevers, and silphium juice.

    Academic text (2005)

  • I want to say goodbye to all that: horses, silphium, chariots, silphium stalks, steeple-chasers, silphium leaves, fevers, and silphium juice.

    Academic text (2005)

  • I want to say goodbye to all that: horses, silphium, chariots, silphium stalks, steeple-chasers, silphium leaves, fevers, and silphium juice.

    Academic text (2005)

  • I want to say goodbye to all that: horses, silphium, chariots, silphium stalks, steeple-chasers, silphium leaves, fevers, and silphium juice.

    Academic text (2005)

  • Silphium was worth its weight in silver, and a cup from around 560 B.C. shows a Cyrenean king overseeing the weighing of bales of silphium.

    Academic text (2005)

  • From the first- and second-century A.D. physician Soranus and pharmacologist Dioscorides, we know silphium was also used to prevent pregnancy and induce abortion.

    Academic text (2005)

  • And surely this use is what the first-century B.C. poet Catullus had in mind when he asked how many "kisses" he and his lover might enjoy, answering himself, "as many grains of sand as there are on Cyrene's silphium shores."

    Academic text (2005)

  • So closely identified with Cyrene were fine horses and silphium that in Unhappy Lovers, the fourth-century B.C. Athenian playwright Antiphanes used them to poke fun at the city: "I will not sail back to that place from which we were carried, Cyrene."

    Academic text (2005)

  • The tall plant silphium can grow up to eight feet and features striking yellow flowers.

Synonyms

genus Silphium
vsSilphium
  • Specialized
9.9

A group of tall North American plants that live for several years with large yellow, sunflower-like flowers

is the simple name used for the plants rather than the formal genus label

Compounds

genus Silphium
  • Specialized
9.9

A group of tall North American plants that live for several years with large yellow, sunflower-like flowers

Silphium laciniatum
  • Specialized
9.9

A tall North American plant with large yellow flowers whose long leaves point north and south

Surface Forms

Silphium singular
Silphiums plural

Etymology

The word Silphium comes from the old Greek name silphion for a famous 'resin'-producing plant. Because the North American plants called Silphium also have sticky, resinous stems and big yellow flowers, botanists used that old name for this group of plants.