This small, lanate shrub is easily recognised by the distinctive soft, woolly covering of white-grey hair on its stems and round green leaves, giving it a velvety texture.

Dittany of Crete has always been highly prized; it is gathered while in bloom in the summer months, and is exported for use in pharmaceuticals, perfumery and to flavour drinks such as vermouth and absinthe.

In Ancient Greece, Hippocrates prescribed plant cures to aid all manner of ailments, and considered dittany of Crete useful for stomach aches and complaints of the digestive system and as a poultice for healing wounds, as well as inducing menstruation.

The cultivation now centres on Embaros and the surrounding villages, south of Heraklion, Crete, and is used to make herbal tea and for use in natural beauty products.

In Book XII.411–415 of Virgil's Aeneid (29-19 BC), Venus heals the wounded Aeneas with dittany: “Hereupon Venus, smitten by her son’s cruel pain, with a mother’s care plucks from Cretan Ida a dittany stalk, [dictamnum genetrix Cretaea carpi ab Ida (412)] clothed with downy leaves and purple flowers; not unknown is that herb to wild goats, when winged arrows have lodged in their flanks.” (Loeb translation).

Charles Baudelaire, in the 1857 poem Tout entière, the 43rd poem in his collection Les Fleurs du Mal, describes his lover as consisting entirely of dittany: Elle tout est dictame (line 11), "she is entirely dittany," referring to the literary tradition of Virgil and Tasso, except that the wound Baudelaire suffers from is not as literal as those that plague Aeneas or Godfrey.

In the 2018 film Hereditary, Annie Graham is tricked into drinking a tea laced with dittany, which purportedly helps make one more susceptible to demonic possession.