what are mandrakes?

Question

okay i should have been clearer... someone just asked 'dont you hate when another woman steals your mandrakes?" she talked about getting pregnant in her question. so i guess i should be asking her what she meant, so if you are reading this, what did you mean?

Answer 1

I know what a mandingo is but not a mandrake

:p

Answer 2

Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because their curious bifurcations cause them to have a semblance to the human figure (male and female), their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in neopagan religions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism

Answer 3

Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because their curious bifurcations cause them to have a semblance to the human figure (male and female), their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in neopagan religions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism.

The mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, is a plant called by the Arabz luffâh, or beid el-jinn (“genie's eggs”). The parsley-shaped root is often branched. Magicians mould this root into a rude resemblance to the human figure, by pinching a constriction a little below the top, so as to make a kind of head and neck, and twisting off the upper branches except two, which they leave as arms, and the lower, except two, which they leave as legs. This root gives off at the surface of the ground a rosette of ovate-oblong to ovate, wrinkled, crisp, sinuate-dentate to entire leaves, 6 to 16 inches long, somewhat resembling those of the tobacco-plant. There spring from the neck a number of one-flowered nodding peduncles, bearing whitish-green flowers, nearly 2 inches broad, which produce globular, succulent, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes, which ripen in late spring.

Answer 4

Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because their curious bifurcations cause them to have a semblance to the human figure (male and female), their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in neopagan religions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism.
Like many of its relatives of the Solanaceae, Mandragora contains a range of tropane alkaloid drugs of: atropine, hyoscyamine, and others. The plant, alone or as an alcoholic infusion, has a long history of use as an anaesthetic.

A frequently-quoted example of early chemical warfare is an incident from 200 BC, when Carthaginian defenders of a city withdrew, leaving behind quantities of wine laced with mandragora. The invading Romans drank the wine, were rendered insensible, and were killed by the returning defenders.

Dioscorides (c. 40 Greece – c. 90) alludes to the employment of mandragora to produce anaesthesia when patients are cut or burnt. Pliny the Elder (23 Italy –79) refers to the effect of the odour of mandragora as causing sleep if it was taken "before cuttings and puncturings lest they be felt". Lucian (c. 120 present-day eastern Turkey – after 180) speaks of mandragora as used before the application of the cautery. The ancient Greek physician,Galen (129 Pergamum, present-day Turkey - 200), has a short allusion to its power to paralyse sense and motion. Isidorus (Cartagena, Spain, about 560 – April 4, 636) is quoted as saying: “A wine of the bark of the root is given to those about to undergo operation that being asleep they may feel no pain.”

Ugone da Lucca, who was born a little after the middle of the twelfth century discovered a soporific which, on being inhaled, put patients to sleep so that they were insensible to pain during the operations performed by him — the drug he employed is known to have been mandragora.

Some people use European mandrake as a belladonna and it can cause mania, hallucinations, and delirium.

Answer 5

Mandrakes (real name is mandragora) are plants that were used for magic as people thought their bulbs resembled the human form. They have become recently recognised thanks to Harry Potter!

Answer 6

Mandrakes are those fat baby-like plants from the second harry potter movie.

Don't ask how I remember...

Answer 7

Mandrakes = Drake is absolutely with no doubt a MAN :D

Answer 8

They are European plants with forked roots that somewhat resemble the human form. They do NOT cry and kill people.

Answer 9

They are plants which are significant in witchcraft fertility rites due to their roots looking phallic.

Answer 10

a belive its some sort of herb or root thats sapossed to help female fertility, kind of like ancient or something