Tarragon or Darnel?

Warning: Bible passages incoming

Which is Tarragon and which is some other plant?

My tarragon plant is slow to come back. The spring has been cold. I am impatient, wanting to know, TO KNOW are these various green leaves my tarragon or something else?

From Matthew Chapter 13, after the well known parable of the sower and the seed, we read, in Young’s Literal Translation:

24 Another simile he set before them, saying: `The reign of the heavens was likened to a man sowing good seed in his field,

25 and, while men are sleeping, his enemy came and sowed darnel in the midst of the wheat, and went away,

26 and when the herb sprang up, and yielded fruit, then appeared also the darnel.

27 `And the servants of the householder, having come near, said to him, Sir, good seed didst thou not sow in thy field? whence then hath it the darnel?

28 And he saith to them, A man, an enemy, did this; and the servants said to him, Wilt thou, then, [that] having gone away we may gather it up?

29 `And he said, No, lest -- gathering up the darnel -- ye root up with it the wheat,

30 suffer both to grow together till the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the darnel, and bind it in bundles, to burn it, and the wheat gather up into my storehouse.’

Lolium temulentum was named after its intoxicating properties. (Image: Otto Wilhelm Thomé/Public domain)

Darnel is a grain that looks just like wheat, until the “ear” appears, that is, until it has born its fruit, result, seed. You probably have heard it translated as “tares”, wheat and tares.

This is the “other plant”

I know that this impostor plant is not tarragon, it is some flower that loves to grow in New England. Why does it look so much like my tarragon!? How did it’s seed know to land right here where it would be indistinguishable from tarragon?

The gospel passage might be referring to lives of individual people. Who knows how a life will turn out? You might say some child is on a bad path, and the garden would be better if that life were pulled. But the idea seems to be that not even The Great Gardener can know, we just have to wait and see how that person turns out.

The passage could also refer to responses that “grow” up inside of me as I live my life. I have an impulse to act a certain way, respond a certain way. Who can say if that impulse is “good” or “bad”? Maybe no one can say, not even The Great Gardener. Maybe I just need to let that part of me live a little, see where it goes, see what fruit or result is actually produced.

The physical fact is often the best metaphor.