Mandrake Root “The most famous magical plant of history” of the Nightshade Family, also called Witches Drink, Thieves Root, Mad Apple, Love Apple and Satan’s Apple. Mandragora officinarum is native to southern Europe from Portugal to Greece, it has been used medicinally for hundreds of years. Mandrake is sometimes referred to as umbrella plant, because it looks like a closed umbrella when it first appears each spring. Mandrake grows rapidly in groups and produces a fruit, but it is rather unsavory. In ancient times Mandrake was an enormously important ritual, inebriating and medicinal plant mentioned in the cruneiform tablets of Assyrians and the Old Testament.