Mandrakes —Ancient Fertility Aid?

Around Passover, visitors to NK can encounter the rare sight of ripe mandrake fruit (Mandragora autumnalis Bertrol) in the Dale of the Song of Songs. In the Song, the woman invites her beloved to the fields where "the mandrakes yield their fragrance" (7:14). The aroma of the mandrakes belongs to the brief season when the fruit is ripe — usually between April and May. Between December and April, the leaves, if rubbed, release a distinctly unpleasant odor, not a fragrance a lover would invoke. The purple flowers that bloom between December and February have no smell whatever.

Mandrakes appear also in the book of Genesis: "Once, at the time of the wheat harvest, Reuven found some mandrakes in the field and brought them to his mother, Leah" (30:14). Noteworthy in this episode is the date. Finding ripe mandrakes at the time of the wheat harvest (late May - early June) is unusual — and for that reason the biblical narrative mentions the season. By the time the wheat is ripe, most mandrake fruit has already been eaten by birds and animals attracted by its fragrance. This — as well as her strong desire to bear a child — accounts for the urgency felt by Leah’s sister, Rachel, when pleading for the mandrakes. (Gen. 14 - 16)

The mandrake has been prized as an aphrodisiac and fertility inducer for millennia. It is the mandrake root that gave rise to the plant's sexual associations: The root is disproportionately large in relation to the visible plant and bears a striking resemblance to the human male anatomy. The mandrake's Hebrew name, duda'im shares a root with the word for beloved, dodi.