Hi, my friend gave me a pot of herb, we have been using it and it has kind of vanilla also lemon fragrance. but we don't know the name of this herb. apparently it is not a common one.

it grows on our sunny side balcony in a pot and likes sun and water;-)

any one who would be able to tell me what is this? I put a picture on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilygarai/

many thanks!

Looks like lemon verbena

I think you are right! thank you so much!

Have you tried smoking it?

...... spad .....?

Lemon verbena indeed. Lovely for making calming tea, just pick a couple of leaves and pour hot water over. If you prune (cut down) a few centimeters from each end (branch) you can dry the leaves and keep them in an airtight container - and the tips will grow back with more branches, and you can repeat. If you keep it indoor over the winter, it will survive and start again next year.

Spad XIII, original in the Brüssels airmuseum, thought I'd do a Illustrator job on it.

For future reference, an excellent source of information on spices & herbs, from Gernot Katzer in Austria

in English http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/index.html#spices

also in German http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/germ/index.html

his multilingual indices are very useful http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/germ/index.html#index

Zitronenvernene http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/germ/Lipp_cit.html

but don't confuse it with Oleander which has similar leaves but is very poisonous: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lfa_frutos.jpg