Mandrake

For the Linux variant, see Mandriva Linux

Mandrake is the common name of a number of plants in the Nightshade family, genus Mandragora. The roots often look like man or woman, or can be easily made to resemble them. The plant has been used in witchcraft for a long time.

Mandrake
Mandragora officinarum
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Solanales
Family:	Solanaceae
Genus:	Mandragora L.

Illustration of mandrake in a textbook fo the 15th century

According to this literature, the plant shrieks in pain, when it is pulled from the ground. This shriek is able to make a person deaf. He might also lose his mind, or even be killed, if he is unprotected.

Mandrake (Mandragora officinalis) has been used as an anaestethic for a long time. For this, it was usually prepared in an alcoholic solution.

Mandrake Media

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  The so-called "female" and "male" mandrakes, from a 1583 illustration

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  The flowers of Mandragora officinarum

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  Mandrake illustration and text. Dioscorides De materia medica

  ―7th century manuscript., Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples.
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  Elephants, mandrake, dragon.

  ―Bestiary, British Library, Sloane Ms. 178.
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  fol. 16r from University of Pennsylvania LJS 46: Herbal ... etc., from Italy and England, dated to ca. 1520

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  Medieval depiction of mandrake excavation with dog.

  ―Medieval. Germanisches Museum, Nuremberg. Sketched by Edmund Oskar Lippmann (1894)
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  Mandragora tied to a dog, from Tacuinum Sanitatis (1474).

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  Alraun in its case

  ―Formerly owned by Karl Lemann, Wien. Now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum collection, Nürnberg.