This flower stands out in its mountaineous habitat, typically meadows on high plateaux (altiplanos) where cattle are kept. Cows refrain from eating it, probably because of its bitterness and toxicity. It is noticeable from its height, it reaches about 1 m (3 ft). It is longlived (50 yrs) and takes about 10 years to flower the first time.
It shows broad lanceolate to fleshy elliptic leaves 10–30 cm (3.9–11.8 in) long and 4–12 cm (1.6–4.7 in) broad. The flowers are yellow — hence the name of the species — with the corolla separated nearly to the base into 5–7 narrow petals.
The name gentian is of Latin origin. It does not come from the name gens, meaning family, as a number of authors mistakenly assert. Rather it derives from the name of a person. Gentius was king of Illyria (ca 220 BCE-ca 168 BCE), present-day Albania, a country bordering on Macedonia.
In 171 BCE, Gentius was allied with the Romans against the Macedonians , but in 169 BCE he changed sides and allied himself with Perseus of Macedon . He arrested two Roman legati (envoys), accusing them of not coming as emissaries but as spies. Gentius destroyed the cities of Apollonia and Epidamnos (Roman Dyrrachium, now Durrës , Albania), which were allied with Rome. In 168 BCE, he was defeated at Scodra by a Roman force under L.
Anicius Gallus, in only twenty or thirty days, and in 167 brought to Rome as a captive to participate in Gallus’s triumph , after which he was interned in Iguvium (present day Gubbio). At first, he and his family were kept in Spoletum (Spoleto), but the inhabitants protested against their stay there.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXV, 34, credits him with discovering the healing properties of gentian. These belonged with the traditional ethnopharmacoloy in a number of countries, including of course those of Roman descent.
In France, a number of apéritif wines made with extracts from the gentian rhizome (i.e., roots) started being commercialized during the nineteenth century: Picon (1837), Salers (1885), Suze (1889°or a little later, La Fourche du Diable (1908), Avèze (1929). In Italy, many amari and vermouth aperitivo wines, such as Aperol (1919) and Campari (1867 and 1904) also contain gentian as a bitter agent; likewise Angostura Bitters (1870s).
The bitter taste comes from a few molecules, such as gentianin, technically a pyranopyridine , a lactone and a pyridine alkaloid. It was first isolated in 1944 by Russian chemists, its structure was established in 1957 by Indian chemists, its anti-inflammatory properties were demonstrated in 2005 by Korean industrial chemists and its anti-depression virtues were reported in 2014 by Chinese chemists. Which shows that scientific research is an international effort, testifying to the inventivity of humans!