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Liquorice gets it name from neither LIQUOR nor RICE; it has nothing whatever to do with the Japanese alcoholic beverage sake.

Liquorice (licorice), the black rubbery confectionary includesan extract from roots of the liquorice plant, Glycyrrhiza, which means “sweet root” in Greek. The cover picture shows both the confectionary and rootpieces. In fact, liquorice root pieces for chewing are one of humankind’s oldestconfectionary items.

Liquorice is sweet because it contains glycyrrhizin,which happens to be a saponin, one of the soapy phytochemicals discussed in Leaf 16. Glycyrrhizinis VERY sweet, nearly fifty times sweeter than sucrose, but liquorice also containsother important phytochemicals, e.g. the glycosylated flavanone liquiritin.

Liquorice plants are legumes, plants that help nitrify the soil. They do this by forming root nodules inhabited by rhizobium, which are symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The phytochemicals play a key role in supporting this symbiosis.

Because of their rich and varied phytochemical content, liquorice extracts find wide application as food and tobacco flavourings and as foaming agents in beers and fire-extinguishers.

Liquorice has also been used throughouthistory for medical purposes, and is recognised in modern medicine for treating indigestion and coughs (European Medicines Agency Monograph on Liquiritiae radix, 2012 – http://shorturl.at/nANO3), and proposed recently as a COVID remedy (Diomede et al. “Can Antiviral Activity of Licorice Help Fight COVID-19 Infection?.” Biomolecules.2021;11(6):855. http://doi:10.3390/biom11060855).

One of the uses of liquorice is for treating the skin, ; indeed liquorice extract is one of the botanicals manufactured by @Green Mountain Biotech. The liquorice extract has powerfulanti-inflammatory activity, and it features in blends designed to alleviate atopicdermatitis.