From “Pyrethrum” in A History of Entomology (1931) by E. O. Essig:
“The use of pyrethrum as an insecticide was early held as a secret in Transcaucasia where the plants, locally known as Persian camomile, flea-grass, or flea killer, grew wild in the Caucasus Mountains…. An Armenian merchant, Jumtikoff, who traveled through this region about 1807 or 1817, noted the value of the prepared powder and transmitted the information to his son who prepared the insecticide in sufficient quantities for export in 1828. The plant was soon afterwards introduced from the Russian Caucasus into Alexandropol and subsequently into Germany, where its value was quickly recognized. A powder was made from the dry flower heads and an infusion from the dry leaves. A volatile oil is the active principle as an insecticide….
“The Caucasian plant was generally known as Pyrethrum roseum and is now referred to as Chrysanthemum coccineum…. The material made from this plant was commercially called Persian insect powder. In Dalmatia, Jugoslavia, a similar insect powder was produced and as carefully guarded as a secret. It was known in the trade as Dalmatian insect powder and was produced from a plant, Pyrethrum cinerariaefolium, claimed to be a native of that region. It was many years before seeds could be procured to grow either of these plants elsewhere.
“The powder from the Caucasus of Persia and also from Dalmatia was introduced into France to destroy household insects about 1850. Some raw material was secured a few years later and it was definitely determined that the powder from the Caucasus was the best. Accordingly in 1856 seeds were procured from the latter place and sown on September 15, 1856, and the few plants raised produced enough seed to establish the industry in France in 1857…. The industry in France was carefully guarded to prevent the dissemination of seeds to other countries.
“G. N. Milco, a native of Dalmatia, a resident of Stockton, California, and afterwards a member of the State Board of Horticulture of California, secured a few seeds from Gravosa in 1876, which he tried out and found successful. The species grown by him was considered to be Pyrethrum cinerariaefolium… by most of the writers of that time…. Soon after its introduction, Milco organized the Buhach Producing and Manufacturing Company at Stockton….”
Hello!
This is the fourth of four posts with photos that I took in late November and the first two weeks of December, of Aster family members that I identified as Tanacetum coccineum. The first post is Technicolor Tanacetum (1 of 4); the second post is Technicolor Tanacetum (2 of 4); and the third post is Technicolor Tanacetum (3 of 4). The photos in this post continue to show the presence of multiple flowers on single stems with distinct colors — something that’s even more visually impressive when the plant blooms in cascading vertical or horizontal clusters.
When I photographed Tanacetum coccineum at Oakland Cemetery and started learning about its botanical history, I had no idea I was going to discover so much intense coverage of the plants’ adoption as an insecticide — which stretches from its Asian roots three thousand years ago, through our current century.
The development of pyrethrum-based insecticides occurred in Europe and the United States in alignment with growing scientific study of plant characteristics and how to botanically or genetically manipulate them. The excerpt from A History of Entomology by E. O. Essig is noteworthy in that regard: the book is considered a seminal study of the worlds of insects, and the author devotes a consequential chapter to the development of the insecticide from Tanacetum coccineum (previously called Chrysanthemum coccineum or Pyrethrum roseum), covering it from the early nineteenth century to the first decades of the twentieth century.
Essig’s account is one that includes elements of a good capitalist greed story, including secrecy, closely guarded manufacturing secrets, and intense competition to capture and flood markets with proven insect control capabilities that would extend from crop management to household use. These characteristics, of course, align with European and American industrialization, but the extension to household use meant that pyrethrum-based insecticides could hook into the burgeoning markets for consumer-oriented convenience products for which the period between the 1850s and 1950s is economically notable.
In his pyrethrum history, the author includes this 1881 Buhach Producing and Manufacturing Company advertisement…
… directed at property owners seeking to banish bugs from their homes. When I saw that advertisement — with its cloud of fanciful insects targeted by pyrethrum mist — I remembered those commercials common in the 1960s and 1970s that featured animated cartoon insects encountering a can of Raid insecticide, as they raced away from the spray screaming and slipping into comas, fading behind the commercial’s well-known branding: “Raid: Kills Bugs Dead!” If you’d like to see some of those commercials, there’s a collection of 125 of them on YouTube going back to 1948, at Raid History Commercials.
This might seem like one of my blogging amusables, but there’s also a connection to the entire pyrethrum/pyrethrin historical thread: Raid, according to its Wikipedia article, initially used a chemical called allethrin, and allethrin — produced in 1949 — was the first synthetic version of the natural insecticide found in Tanacetum plants. This enabled subsequent development of a greater volume of more targeted and longer-lasting insecticides; though pyrethrum insecticides are still used and produced, and are often part of organic farming because they’re a natural (rather than chemically created) form of insect control.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
