It never occurred to me that the herbs might be real. Why would it? I was used to picking things like Ghost Mushrooms and Dreamfoil, and I’m pretty sure they’re not real. And so to me, walking around the wilderness of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion – what a lovely game that was, and what a lot of walking I did, like some kind of possessed rambler in plate mail – there was nothing particularly notable about ripping handfuls of St. Jahn’s Wort and Bergamot out of the ground while I explored. Just another made-up herb, I thought. And who came up with the name St. Jahn’s Wort anyway? It sounds disgusting. What is it, shavings?
Chokeberry, Cairn Bolete, Elf Cup, Lady’s Smock, Monkshood: they all sounded made-up to me. I mean Elf’s Cup for Christ’s sake! (It’d be a good cup to toast with, though, wouldn’t it? “Here’s to your good elf!” and that.) They’re all straight from the pages of fantasy, surely?
Then one day everything changed. I was in a health store, don’t hold that against me, when something caught my eye: a packet on a shelf claiming to be able to heighten my mood. St. John’s Wort. I practically fainted into the Rescue Remedies. It’s real?!
(OK, time to highlight the spelling discrepancy some of you will have spotted. The herb is St. Wort in the game but St. Wort in real-life. Honestly, I only realised it while writing this piece. My mind must have been auto-correcting it all of these years. I don’t know why they have different spellings and the internet isn’t readily telling me. The most convincing explanation is that having a herb named after a religious figure from the real world, in a made-up world with different gods, would be a bit confusing, though the existence of this paragraph seems to suggest they’ve achieved the same end anyway.)