OLEANDER

OLEANDER

LATIN NAME: NERİUM OLEANDER

HOMELAND: MEDITERRANEAN

Icon of Hiroshima

Before moving on to fairy tales and stories, we should point out the striking fact that the first plant to sprout naturally from the soil in Hiroshima, 28 years later, in 1973, where it was said that no plant would grow for at least 70 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945.

After the examinations, it was explained that the clean soil layers carried by the typhoons and storms that took place on the condition of surrendering the honor of the oleander plant may have been effective in this, and then the oleander plant was accepted as the symbol of the city of Hiroshima.

Although the Rose of Jericho mentioned in the Bible and the tree of the devil that grows at the bottom of Hell in the Qur'an are thought to be oleanders, there is no definite opinion about them yet.

The water obtained by boiling the leaves and flowers of the oleander plant, which has been considered deadly poisonous since ancient times, was used as an insecticide in the past.

With the development of chemistry, it has been understood that the toxic effect is caused by a kind of cardiac glycoside, which is found in high levels in the flowers and leaves and causes tachycardia.

A total of 200 drug patents have been granted by WIPO in the fields of oncology, dermatology and cardiology since 1973, regarding oleandrin, the effective ingredient of the oleander plant, which has been used as a medicine with different methods since ancient times, especially among the peoples living in the Mediterranean basin.

After all this scientific information, let's finish our oleander topic with the sad love stories of Leander and Hero in Greek mythology.

According to the story, Prince Leander, who lives on the Thrace side of the Dardanelles, and an Aphrodite priestess named Hero, who lives on the Anatolian coast, fall in love with each other. Every night, Hero holds the opposite torch from the tower of the temple and makes Leander come to him by swimming, and the lovers begin to meet in this way. Angry at this situation, Aphrodite extinguishes Hero's torch one night, and Leander, who lost his way, dies from exhaustion. Hero, who finds Leander's dead body on the seashore in the morning, laments Oh Leander, Oh Leander. Leander has a flower in his hand. Hero, who took this flower and planted it in the memory of her lover Leander, called the flower Oh Leander by lamenting, so its name is still referred to as Oleander, which is still its international name in ancient Greek and Latin.