Thyme

(Thymus species)

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The Greeks saw it as an emblem of courage; the Romans, a cure for melancholy. The English still use it as a tea to revive and refresh the sickly. And the Arabs adore it as the base for all the variations of their famous spice mixture zatar. It originated in the mountainous regions of Southern Europe. Its alliance with bees is storied--producing exquisite honey, going back to the renown ancient Hymettus honey.

Here's a recipe with it from 1600 that's kept in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum:

TO ENABLE ONE TO SEE THE FAIRIES: A pint of sallet oyle and put in into a vial glasse; and first wash it with rose-water and marygolde water; the flowers to be gathered towards the east. Wash it till the oyle becomes white, then put into the glasse, and then put thereto the budds of hollyhocke, the flowers of marygolde, the flowers or toppes of wild thyme the budds of young hazle, and the thyme must be gathered near the side of a hill where fairies use to be; and take the grasse of a fairy throne; then all these put into othe oyle in the glasse and sette it to dissolve three dayes in the sunne and then keep it for thy use.

And, last but not least, who could forget Tosca's song of love to Caravadossi in Act I:

Non la sospiri la nostra casetta
Che tutta ascosa nel verde ci aspetta?
Nido a noi sacro, ignoto al mondo inter,
Pien d'amore e di mister?
Al tuo fianco sentire
Per le silenziose
Stellate ombre, salire
Le voci delle cose!
Dai boschi, dai roveti,
Dall'arse erbe, dall'imo
Dei franti sepolcreti
Odorosi di timo,
La notte escon bisbigli
Di minuscoli amori
E perfidi consigli
Che ammolliscono i cuori.
Fiorite, o campi immensi palpitati,
Aure marine, nel lunare albor.
Ah...piovete voluttà, volte stellate!
Arde in Tosca un folle amor!

("Do you not long for our little house/ That is waiting for us, hidden in the grove?/ Our refuge, sacred to us and unseen by the world,/ Protected with love and mystery?/ Oh, at your side to listen there/ To the voices of the night/ As they rise thorugh the starlit,/ Shadowed silences:/ From the woods, from the thickets/ And the dry grass, from the depths/ Of shattered tombs/ Scented with thyme,/ The night murmurs/ Its thousand loves/ And false counsels/ To soften and seduce the heart./ Oh wide fields, blossom! and sea winds, throb/ In the moon's radiance, ah,/ Rain down desire, you vaulted stars!/ Tosca burns with a mad love!")