Samphire

27th January 2024

Photo Credit: AndyRowland (Getty Images), CANVA

QUOTATION

Here’s the place. Stand still. How fearful

And dizzy ‘tis to cast one’s eyes so low!

The crows and choughs that wing the midway air

Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down

Hangs one that gathers samphire - dreadful trade;

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen that walk upon the beach

Appear like mice

EDGAR: King Lear, Act 4, Scene 6

SAMPHIRE (Rock Samphire: Crithmum maritimum)

Samphire appears only once in this evocative scene taking place on the cliffs of Kent. Rock Samphire was a valued food plant but a dangerous way to earn your living. The Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth Century England (Tudor Accidents) Project records 3 instances of ‘death by samphire gathering’ in the late 1500s.

John Gerard (1597) tells us that the Rock Sampier growes on the rocky cliffs at Dover, Winchelsey, Rie, about Southampton, the Isle of Wight and most rocks around the West and North of England’. He advises that it be gathered in August to be pickled and ‘the leaves kept in pickle, and eaten in sallads with oile and vinegar, is a pleasant sauce for meat’, ‘it is the pleasantest sauce, most familiar, and best agreeing with mans body’.

Rock Samphire is fleshy plant of the Carrot family (APIACEAE) native to Britain, Ireland, Western coasts of Europe and the Mediterranean. It grows on rocks and crevices on the shoreline. There is sometimes confusion between Rock Samphire (Crithmum maritimum) and Marsh Samphire (Salicornia spp.) which grows in saltmarshes. Shakespeare’s reference makes clear that he is talking about Rock Samphire.

More Information

BSBI Plant Atlas 2020: Crithmum maritimum, Marsh Samphire

Everyday Life & Fatal Accidents in 16th C England (Tudor Accidents): Discovery of the Month July 2019 Samphire

Folger Shakespeare Library: Search Shakespeare’s Works

John Gerard, 1597, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (1636 edition accessed via Archive.org)

Kew Plants of the World Online: Crithmum maritimum, Salicornia