Marigolds colour European pasta and mark Mexico's Day of the Dead
The flowers English speakers call marigolds, genus Tagetes, come from Mexico and Central America, where the Nahua knew them as cempōhualxōchitl. Today their petals supply a yellow food dye, their leaves flavour a Peruvian potato sauce, and their blooms fill garlands at weddings and festivals across India.
Carl Linnaeus formally named the genus in 1753, borrowing a label earlier botanists had used. It holds about 50 species of annual or perennial herbs in the daisy family, ranging from a tenth of a metre to over two metres tall, with gold, orange, yellow or white flower heads often touched with maroon. The Latin name recalls Tages, an Etruscan figure said to have sprung from ploughed soil, perhaps a nod to how readily the plants come back each year. Marigold itself means Mary's gold and first belonged to a European plant, Calendula.
The names in garden centres mislead. African marigolds are mostly forms of Tagetes erecta, which is native to Mexico and grows wild in states such as Puebla and Veracruz. French marigolds are hybrids of Tagetes patula, many bred in France. Foliage can smell musky and sharp, and roots release antibacterial thiophenes, so growers are told to keep marigolds away from legume crops. Some perennial species resist deer, rabbits and peccaries.
The flowers of Tagetes erecta are loaded with lutein, an orange-yellow pigment approved in the European Union as the colouring E161b for foods from margarine to ice cream; in the United States the extracts are allowed only in animal feed. Tagetes minuta, called huacatay in the Andes, tastes like a blend of basil, tarragon, mint and citrus and goes into the potato dish ocopa. It also yields a perfume oil, yet counts as a noxious invader in some regions. Tagetes lucida makes an anise-flavoured tea in Mexico and is sold as Texas tarragon.
Culturally, erecta blooms are central to Mexico's Day of the Dead. In India and Thailand they are sold daily for rituals, and in Ukraine the flowers, called chornobryvtsi, are a national symbol found in songs and tales.
Source: Tagetes
