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USEFUL WILD PLANTS
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS Author of “Under the Sky in California,’? ‘‘With the Flowers and Trees in California,”? “Finding the Worth While in California,” “‘F inding the Worth While in the Southwest,’’ Ete.
ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS, AND BY NUMEROUS LINE DRAWINGS BY LUCY HAMILTON ARING ‘
NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE @ CO. 1920
Copyright, 1920, by Rozgerr M. McBrine & Co.
@ SBIOT S15
@!7505
Published, » 1920
TO
DOROTHY F. H. LOVER OF WILD THINGS
THIS VOLUME 1S AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT
LL the familiar vegetables and fruits of our kitchen gardens, as well as the cereals of our
fields, were once wild plants; or, to put it more ac- curately, they are the descendants, improved by cultivation and selection, of ancestors as untamed in their way as the primitive men and women who first learned the secret of their nutritiousness. Many of these—as, for example, the potato, Indian corn, cer- tain sorts of beans and squashes, and the tomato— are of New World origin; and the purpose of this volume is to call attention to certain other useful plants, particularly those available as a source of human meat and drink, that are to-day growing wild in the woods, waters and open country of the United States. Though now largely neglected, many ‘of these plants formed in past years an important element in the diet of the aborigines, who were vegetarians to a greater extent than is generally suspected, and whose patient investigation and in- genuity have opened the way to most that we know of the economic possibilities of our indigenous flora. White explorers, hunters and settlers have also, at
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT
times, made use of many of these plants to advan- tage, though with the settlement of the country a return to the more familiar fruits and products of civilization has naturally followed. Man’s tendency to nurse a habit is nowhere more marked than in his stubborn indisposition to take up with new foods, if the first taste does not please, as frequently it does not; witness the slowness with which the tomato came into favor, and the Englishman’s con- tinued indifference to maize for human consumption. Sometimes, however, the claims of necessity over- ride taste, and there would seem to be a service in presenting in a succinct way the known facts about at least the more readily utilized of our wild plants. The data herein given, the writer owes in part to the published statements of travelers and investi- gators (to whom credit is given in the text), and in part to his own first hand observations, particularly in the West, where the Indian is not yet altogether out of his blanket, and where some practices still linger that antedate the white man’s coming. The essential worth of the plants discussed having been proved by experience, it is hoped that to dwellers in rural districts, to campers and vacationists in the wild, as well as to nature students and naturalists generally, the work may be practically suggestive. The reader is referred to the following standard
INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT
works for complete scientific descriptions of the plants discussed: Gray’s Manual of Botany of the Northern United States (east of the Rockies) ; Brit- ton and Brown’s Illustrated Flora of the United States and Canada (the same territory as covered by Gray); Small’s Flora of the Southeastern United States; Watson’s Botany of the Geological Survey of California; Coulter’s New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains; Wootton and Standley’s Flora of New Mexico.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE Inrropuctory STATEMENT. . . . . . . . | Vil I Witp Puants with Eprste Tusers, Buss or Roors 1
II Witp Puants with Episte Tusers, Buss or Roots (Continued). . . 2 1. we ew ew ewe
III Witp Seeps or Foop VaALur, anp How Tury Have Been UTILIZED . . . . . . ee ee CD
IV Tue Acorn as Human Foon anp Some OTHER WILD NUGS ws «3 wwe ee ee ee ee V_ Some Littie Recarpep WILD Fruits anp Berrigs . 83 VI Win Piants witH Episuz Stems anp Leaves . . 114 VII Beverace Puants or FienpD anD Woop. . . . . 141 VIII VecEetTasLe Susstirutes ror Soap. . . . . . 167 IX Some MepicinaL WitpIncs WortuH Knowince . . 184 X Muscevnansous Uses or Winn Puants « . . . 210
XI A Cautionary CHAPTER ON CERTAIN PoISONOUS PLANTS: « @ & wow @ @ « © @ Js « «236 Recionan InpEx . . . . . . . - « « + 209
Genzran Inpex . . 02... 6. ee 269
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE
Indian woman shelling acorns, to be ground into
meal. . . . sw et ee et) Frontispiece FACING . PAGE
Prickly Pear (Opuntia tuna), one of the important food plants of the desert regions. . . . . +. . . « 18
An Indian of the Great Lakes Region ees wild rice by means of dasher-like stick . . . . » «¢ ~ 46
Red Maple (Acer rubrum), the source of a dark blue dye in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists . . . . 54
A Western mountain Indian’s storage baskets for preserving acorns and pine-nuts. They are elevated to forestall the depredations of rodents . . . . 70
A Southwestern desert hillside, which, in os of its desolate look, bears plants yielding food, soap, textile fiber and drniing water. The man in the foreground is cutting
MeS@Al 2 i Bs ww ww Bo we Ee Se we Se 190 Gathering tunas, fruit.of the nopal cactus, California . . 108 California Fan Palm (Washingtonia), which furnishes food,
clothing and building materials . . . . . . . 122 Cereus giganteus—Sahuaro—producing a fruit that is used
for wine, syrup and butter. . .-. . . . . . 112 Southwestern Indian cutting mescal (Agave deserti) for
baking. 3. ae kee ae a DSB Echinocactus, a sis user water barrel of the Southwestern
deserts . . . < % a ow & oe ow a we wy 168
A California Soap Root, Chenopodium Californicum . . 158
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE
FACING PAGE
A Pacific soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). The bulb, stripped of its fibrous covering, is highly sapona- ceous. The fiber is useful for making coarse brushes and mattresses . . .... .... .- 174
Tunas, fruit of a Southwestern cactus. Showing how it is opened to secure the meaty pulp . . . . . . . 174
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida, L.) The bark is used in making a medicine similar to quinine, and produces
also a red dye used by the Indians . . . . .. «. 204 Blood-root (Sanguinaria Canadensis), valuable as the ‘source of abright red dye . . . ... . . . . « 224
Butternut (Juglans cinerea). The bark is the source of a dye used for the uniforms of Confederate soldiers during
the Civil War. . . . . . 2... ee 240 Indian woman preparing ee oe ee for basket making. . . . ee . . « . 252
Mesquit Beans, utilized by the Indians for food and beverage 270
Wild Date (Yucca glauca) . The root furnishes a satisfactory substitute for soap . . . . . « « ae ss « 270
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE
Groundnut (Apios tuberosa) .
Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus dubictass) Indian Breadroot (Psoralea esculenta) . Biseuit-Root (Peucedanum Sp.) Biseuit-Root (Peucedanum ambiguum) Bitter Root (Lewisia rediviva)
Wild Leek (Allium tricoceum)
Sego Lily (Calochortus Nuitalliz)
Wild Onion (Brodiaea capitata)
Camas (Camassia esculenta)
Chufa (Cyperus esculentus) .
Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.)
Conte (Smilax Pseudo-China) Arrowhead (Sagitturia variabilis) Water Chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea) Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) . Chia (Salvia Columbariae) ‘ 5 Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica)
Islay (Prunus ilicifolia) .
Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica) Mesquit (Prosopis juliflora)
Jojoba (Simmondsia Californica) Buffalo-Berry (Shepherdia argentea) Tomato del Campo (Physalis longifolia) Service-Berry (Amelanchier Canadensis) American Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis) Manzanita (Arctostaphylos Manzanita) Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifolium) May Apple (Podophyllum peltatum) Salal (Gaultheria Shallon) ; Bracken Shoots (Péeris aquilina)
THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE
}
Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) . Milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca)
Wild Rhubarb (Rumex hymenosepalus) Winter Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) Miner’s Lettuce (Montia perfoliata) New Jersey Tea (Ceanothus Americanus) Spicewood (Lindera Benzoin) . . Yerba Buena (Micromeria Douglasi) Sumae (Rhus glabra)
Lemonade-Berry (Rhus integrifolia) Cassena (Ilex vomitoria)
California Soap-Plant (Chieragatim: pomeridianum) .
Soap-Berry (Sapindus marginatus) Missouri Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis) Wild Senna (Cassia Marylandica) Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) . Wild Cherry (Prunus serotina) . Dittany (Cunila Mariana) . Cascara Sagrada (Rhamnus Caltifornica) Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon glutinosum) Yerba Mansa (Anemopsis Californica) Creosote-Bush (Larrea Mexicana) Canchalagua (Erythraea venusta) Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) Puccoon (Lithospernum canescens) Kinnikinnik (Cornus sericea) .
Sweet Colt’s-Foot (Petasites ‘salmrata Candleberry (Myrica Carolinensis) Death Cup (Amanita phalloides)
Water Hemlock (Cicuta maculata) Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum) . Moonseed (Menispermum Canadense) Loco-Weed (Astragalus mollissimus) Jimson-Weed (Datura Stramonium) Mescal-Button (Lophophora Williamsit) Swamp Sumac (Rhus venenata). . . Poison Ivy (Rhus Taxicodendron) . .
.
. 130 . 148 . 146 . 151 . 153 . 155 . 163
171,172
. 178 . 180 . 182 187, 188 . 190 . 191 . 193 . 196 . 199 . 201 . 203 . 208
212, 213
. 224 . 226 . 233 . 235 . 237 . 238 . 241 . 243 . 246 . 248 . 253 . 255 + 256
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
CHAPTER I
WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
Your greatest want is you want much of meat. Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots. Timon of Athens.
HE plant life of the New World was always a subject of keen interest to the early explorers, whose narratives not only abound in quaint allu- sions to the new and curious products of Flora that came under their notice, but also record for many of our familiar plants uses that are a surprise to most modern readers. In that famous compilation of travelers’ tales, published in England some three centuries ago under the title of ‘‘Purchas: His Pil- grimage,’’ it is asserted of the tubers of a certain plant observed in New England that ‘‘boiled or sodden they are very good meate’’; and elsewhere in Master Purchas’s volumes there is note of the abun- 1
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
dance of the same tubers, which were sometimes as many as ‘‘forty together on a string, some of them as big as hen’s eggs.’’
GRouUNDNUT (Apios tuberosa)
This plant is readily identifiable as the Groundnut —Apios tuberosa, Moench., of the botanists—of fre-
quent occurrence in marshy grounds and moist 2
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
thickets throughout a large part of the United States and Canada from Ontario to Florida and westward to the Missouri River basin. It is a climbing peren- nial vine with milky juice and leaves composed of usually 5 to 7 leaflets. To the midsummer rambler it betrays its presence by the violet-like fragrance exhaled by bunchy racemes of odd, brownish-purple flowers of the type of the pea. Neither history nor tradition tells us what lucky Indian first chanced upon the pretty vine’s prime secret, that store of roundish tubers borne upon underground stems, which made it so valuable to the red men that they eventually took to cultivating it about some of their villages. Do not let the name Groundnut cause you to confuse this plant with the one that yields the familiar peanut of city street stands, which is quite a different thing. The Groundnut is really no nut at all but a starchy tuber, which, when cooked, tastes somewhat like a white potato. Indeed, Dr. Asa Gray expressed the belief that had civilization started in the New World instead of the Old, this would have been the first esculent tuber to be de- veloped and would have maintained its place in the same class with the potato.
Narratives of white travelers in our American wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Ground-
3
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
nut’s part in saving them from serious hunger. Being a vegetable, it made a grateful complement to the enforced meat diet of pioneers and explorers; and Major Long, whose share in making known the Rocky Mountain region to the world is commemo- rated in the name of one of our country’s loftiest peaks, tells in his journal of his soldiers’ finding the little tubers in quantities of a peck or more hoarded up in the brumal retreats of the field mice against the lean days of winter. They may be 5 cooked either by boiling or by roasting.
Though the Groundnut has so far failed of se- curing a footing in the gardens of civilization, there is another tuber-bearing plant growing wild in the United States that has a recognized status in the world’s common stock of vegetables. This is a species of Sunflower (Helianthus tuberosus, L.), the so-called Jerusalem Artichoke. It is indigenous in moist, alluvial ground from middle and eastern Canada southward to Georgia and west to the Mis- sissippi Valley, attaining a height at‘times of 10 feet or more. The French explorers in the St. Lawrence region in the early seventeenth century saw the tubers in use by the Indians and found them so palatable when cooked, suggesting arti-
chokes, that they sent specimens back to France. 4
i
\
JERUSALEM “ARTICHOKE (Helianthus tuberosus)
5
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
There they caught the popular taste and under the name of pommes de Canada, batatas de Canada or Canadiennes, their cultivation spread. In Italy they were grown in the famous Farnese gardens and called girasole articiocco, that is, Sunflower arti- choke. A perverted pronunciation of the Italian by the English (who became interested in the plant and were growing it extensively as early as 1621) ac- counts for the otherwise unaccountable association of Jerusalem with it. The tubers (borne at the tip of horizontal rootstocks) are in the wild plant but an inch or two in diameter, but in cultivation they may be much larger, as well as better flavored. They reach their maximum development in the au- tumn, when they may be taken up and stored in pits for winter use; or, since frost does not injure them, they may be left in the ground all winter, and dug in the spring. In spite of the Jerusalem Arti- choke’s popularity as a vegetable abroad, Americans have so far been indifferent to it, except as feed for cattle and hogs—another instance of the prophet’s lack of honor in his own country.
1There are about 40 species of wild sunflowers growing within the borders of the United States, and it is not always easy to identify some given species. The Artichoke Sunflower is a perennial with hairy, branching stems 6 to 12 feet tall, and rough, ovate leaves, taper pointed, toothed at the edges, 4 to 8 inches long and 11% to 3 inches wide, narrowing at the base to a rather long footstalk.
6
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
Upon dry, elevated plains in and contiguous to the Missouri River basin ranging from Saskatchewan through Montana and the Dakotas southward to Texas, you may find, where the plough has not ex- terminated it, another famous wild food plant—the Indian Bread-root of the American pioneers, known to them also as Prairie Turnip and Prairie Potato, and to the French Canadians as pomme de prairie and pomme blanche. Botanically it is Psoralea escu- lenta, Pursh, and its smaller cousin P. hypogaea, Nutt. Itis a rather low, rough-hairy herb, resinous- dotted, with long-stalked leaves divided into five fingers, and bearing dense spikes of small bluish flowers like pea blossoms in shape. The tuberous root, a couple of inches in length, resembles a minia- ture sweet potato. Its nutritious properties were well known to Indians and such whites of other days as had any respect for the aboriginal dietary; and Indian women found a regular sale for it among the caravans of white traders, trappers and emigrants that traveled the far western plains in pre-railroad
Flowers yellow, both disk and rays, the latter numbering 12 to 20, and 1 to 1% inches long. There is another species, H. giganteus, L., one form of which growing in moist ground in western Canada has thickened, tuber-like roots which are similarly edible. These are the “Indian potato” of the Assiniboine Indians. Mr. W. N. Clute, in “The American Botanist,” February, 1918, noted that the prairie species, Helianthus laetiflorus, Pers., also bears tubers, which are little inferior to those of H. twberosus.
7
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
times. The fresh tubers, dug in late summer, may be eaten raw with a dressing of oil, vinegar and
INDIAN BREAD-ROOT (Psoralea esculenta)
salt, or they may be boiled or roasted. The Indians (who were habitual preservers of vegetable foods 8
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
for winter use) were accustomed to save a portion of the Bread-root harvest, first slicing the tubers and then drying them in the sun or over a slow: fire. The dried article was ground between stones and added to stews or soups, or mixed with water and baked in the form of cakes. The heart of the tuber is white and granular, and, according to an analysis quoted by Dr. Havard,? contains 70% starch, 9% nitrogenous matter and 5% sugar. Some attempts have been made to introduce it into culti- vation as a rival of the potato, but the latter is so well entrenched in the popular regard that nothing has come of the effort. As a resource for those who are cut off from a potato supply, however, this free offering of Nature should be better known. John Colter, one of Lewis and Clarke’s men, escap- ing from some Blackfeet who were intent upon killing him, lived for a week entirely upon these Bread-root tubers, which he gathered as he made his painful way, afoot, wounded, and absolutely naked, back to the settlements of the whites.
There are, by the way, two wild species of true potatoes indigenous to the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona—Solanum tuberosum boreale, Gray, and
2“Food Plants of the North American Indians,” Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 22, No. 3.
9
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
8. Jamesii, Torr. The tubers are about the size of grapes, are quite edible when cooked and long ago attracted the attention of the Navajo and other Indians, who use them. And curiously in contrast to this the sweet potato of cultivation has a wild cousin in the United States (Ipomoea pandurata, Meyer) with a huge, tuberous root weighing some- times 20 pounds, popularly called ‘‘man-of-the- earth.’’ It is found in dry ground throughout the eastern United States, a trailing or slightly climbing vine with flowers like a morning glory. So obvious a root could hardly have escaped the Indian quest for vegetables, and as a matter of fact it was eaten to some extent after long roasting.
There is a plant family—the Umbelliferae—that has given to our gardens carrots, parsnips, celery and parsley. It includes also a number of wild members with food value, occurring principally in the Rocky Mountain region westward to the Pacific. Among these the genus Peucedanum, represented in western North America by over 50 species, is note- worthy because of the edible tuberous roots of several species. Of these the following may be noted, adopting Dr. Havard’s enumeration in his paper above quoted: P. Canbyi, C. and R. (the chuklusa of the Spokane Indians); P. ewrycarpum,
10
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
C. and R. (the skelaps of the Spokanes) ; P. Geyeri, Wats.; P. ambiguum, T. and G., P. cous, Wats. (the cow-as of the In-
dians). The tubers may
be consumed raw and in
that state have a celery :
flavor. The most usual
method of use among the
Indians, however, was to
remove the rind, dry the
inside portion, and pul- verise it. The flour 5 S would then be mixed
with water, flattened into , cakes and dried in the
sun or baked. These y cakes, according to /¥7{ AL Kw
Palmer,’ were custom- /; f i
arily about half an inch
thick but a yard long by
a foot wide, with a hole Brscurr-Roor
in the middle, by which (pace ae
they could be tied to the saddle of the traveler. The taste of such cakes is rather like stale biscuits. On
3Edward Palmer, “Food Products of the North American Indians,” Ann. Rept. U. S. Dept. Agriculture, 1870,
i
Biscuit-Roor (Peucedanum ambiguum)
12
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
this account, the Peucadanums were commonly termed Biscuit-root by the white Americans. The Canadian French call them racine blanche. The genus is marked by leaves pinnate in some species, finely dissected in others, sometimes stemless and never tall, and with small white or yellow flowers disposed in umbels like those of the carrot or parsley. Novices, however, should be warned that the Um- belliferae include several poisonous species, and the investigator should be well assured of the identity of his plant before experimenting with it.
Then there is Yamp, of this same family, and cousin to the caraway. It is the botanists’ Carum Gairdneri, B. and H.—a slender, smooth herb, some- times four feet high, with scanty pinnate leaves 3- to 7-parted and white flowers like the carrot’s, growing usually on dry hillsides in mountainous country from British Columbia to Southern California and eastward to the Rockies. The clustered, spindle- shaped roots are about half an inch thick, and raw have an agreeable, nutty taste, with a considerable sugar content. Not only Indians but white settlers also have proved the nutritive value of this root, eating it either raw or cooked. In meadows and along stream borders in Central California a nearly related species (Carum Kelloggu, Gray) frequently
13
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
occurs and goes among the whites by the name of Wild Anise.* Its roots bear in greater or less abundance flattish tubers, which are serviceable in the same way as Yamp.
A more famous root of the Pacific Slope than Yamp is the Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva, Pursh), the racine amére of the French explorers, and found from Arizona north to Montana (where it has given name to the Bitterroot Mountains and Bitterroot River) and west to the Pacific. It is a member of the Portulaca family, with showy, many-petaled white or pink blossoms sometimes two inches across and opening in the sunshine close to the ground, in form like a spoked wheel. Montana has adopted it as her State flower. It is one of the marvels in the history of alimentation that the unappetizing roots of this plant, intensely bitter when raw and smelling like tobacco when boiling, should have secured a stable place in any human bill of fare. Neverthe- less, by the Indians of the far Northwest it has been extensively consumed from time immemorial, and explorers’ journals contain many references to ab-
4Not to be confused with the mis-called Sweet Anise, which is really Fennel, the introduced Foeniculum vulgare. The latter is abundantly clothed with large, finely dissected leaves of a pronounced licorice flavor and has yellow flowers; while the Carum bears white flowers and its leaves are sparse and pinnate with simple seg- ments, 14
BITTERROOT (Lewisia rediviva)
15
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
original ‘‘spreads’’ put before them in which spat- lum, as the Oregon Indians called it, had a prominent place. Boiling has the effect of dissipating the bitterness; and the white heart of the root, which is starchy and mucilaginous, is certainly nutritious, though ideas as to its palatability differ. The In- dian practice is to dig the roots in the spring, at which time the brownish bark slips off more easily than after the plant has flowered; and as the bitter principle is mainly resident in the bark, it is desir- able to reject this before cooking. A noteworthy character of the root is its tenacity of life. Speci- mens that have been dipped in boiling water, dried and laid away in an herbarium for over a year, have been known to revive on being put in the ground again, to grow and to produce flowers. An Eastern cousin of the Bitterroot is the charming woodland flower of early spring called Spring Beauty (Claytonia Virginica, L.). It rises from a small, deep-seated, round tuber of starchy composi- tion and nutty flavor, which might serve at a pinch to stave off starvation, and has indeed so served the aborigines.
16
CHAPTER II
WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS (Continued)
T is a character of the Lily family that the plants
are usually produced from subterranean bulbs or corms, and many such growing wild in the United States are of proved nutritiousness and palatability. Among these, for instance, are species of Allium, wild onion or leek, one of which particularly (A. tricoccum, Ait.) is recommended by those who have tried it for the sweetness and flavor of its young bulbs. It inhabits rich woodlands of the eastern Atlantic States north of South Carolina, its umbel of white flowers borne on naked stalks, appearing in June or July after its rather broad, odorous leaves have withered away. It is the Pacific Coast, how- ever, that has a special fame for edible wild bulbs, many of which are known to the world at large only for the beauty of their flowers. There the Indians have, from before history began, been consuming such bulbs either raw or cooked. To some extent,
17
Witp Leek (Allium tricocewm)
18
(R01 eBed 99g) ‘suor1as y49s ap ay} yo syueld pooy yuezsodurt ay} yo uo ‘(puny vYyUNgQ) IeIg Alou g
ER i
PER Pe wee r ee iS
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
also, they have been drawn upon for food by white travelers and settlers—the most palatable species being of the genera Calochortus, Brodiaea and Camassia, and com- monly called ‘‘In- dian potatoes.’’ The genus Calochortus furnishes the flower gardens of both hemi- spheres with the charming Mariposa Tulips, and few who enjoy their beauty re- alize the gastronomic possibilities of the homely, farinaceous corms out of which the lovely blossoms spring. The species most widely known as a food source is Calo- chortus Nuttallu, T. and G., the Sego Lily, which has the distinction of being Utah’s State flower. It may be recognized by its showy, tulip-shaped blossoms, whitish or lilac with a purple spot above the yellow heart of the 19
Seco Lity (Calochortus Nuttallit)
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
flower, the leaves few and grass-like. It is in- digenous to an extensive territory ranging from Dakota to Mexico and westward to the Pacific Coast. It was, I believe, a common article of diet among the first Mormons in Utah, under the name ‘‘Wild Sago,’’ through a misunderstanding, perhaps, of the word ‘‘Sego,’’ which is the Ute Indian term for this plant. A California species (C. venustus, Benth.) with white or lilac flowers variously tinged or blotched with red, yellow or brown, is also highly esteemed for its sweet corms. The cooking may be done by the simple process known to campers of roasting in hot ashes, or by steaming in pits, a method tHat will be described later. on.
Brodiaea is a genus comprising numerous species, of which the so-called California Hyacinth, Grass- nut or Wild Onion (B. capitata, Benth.), common throughout the State, is perhaps the best known. Its clustered, pale blue flowers bunched at the tip of a slender stem are a familiar sight in grassy places in spring. The bulbs are about the size of marbles and noticeably mucilaginous. Haten raw they seem rather flat at first, but the taste grows on one very quickly. They are also very good if boiled slowly for a half hour or so. The Harvest Brodiaea (B.
20
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
grandiflora, Smith), with elusters of blue, funnel-
shaped flowers like familiar species common in fields and grassy glades from Central Cali- fornia northward to Washington. Its bulbs are best cook- ed, as by slow roast- ing in hot ashes, which develops the sweetness.
But the liliaceous bulb that has enter- ed to the most im- portant extent in-
to the menus both ff
of aborigines and white pioneers is the Camas or Qua- mash—‘‘the queen root of this clime,’’ as Father De Smet
little blue lilies, is another
Wrp ONIon (Brodiaea capitata)
puts it in his ‘‘Oregon Missions.”’ It is a hand- some plant when in flower, which is in early
21
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
summer. The 6-parted, usually blue blossoms, an inch or more across, occur in ample racemes at the top of stalks a foot or two high; the leaves all radical and grass-like. The bulb somewhat resembles a small onion, but is almost tasteless in the raw state. The range of the plant is from Idaho and Utah west- ward to central California, Oregon and Washington; and when undisturbed it grows so abundantly in open meadows and swampy lands as to convert them at a distance into the appearance of blue lakes ef water. John K. Townsend, a Philadelphian who published an interesting narrative of a journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1839, has left us a pleasant, old-fash- ioned picture of a Camas feast in central Idaho. ‘‘In the afternoon,’’? he writes, ‘‘we arrived at Kamas Prairie, so called from a vast abundance of this succulent root which it produces. The plain is a beautiful level one of about a mile over, hemmed in by low, rocky hills, and in spring the pretty blue flowers of the Kamas are said to give it a peculiar and very pleasing appearance. ... We encamped here near a small branch of the Mallade River; and soon after all hands took their kettles and scattered over the prairie to dig a mess of Kamas. We were of course eminently successful, and were furnished with an excellent and wholesome meal. When boiled, 22
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
this little root is palatable and somewhat resembles the taste of the common potato. The Indian method of preparing it, however, is the best.’’
This method, which embodies really the principle of our present day fireless cooker and has been em- ployed by the aborigines from time immemorial for cooking numberless things, is briefly this: A hole of perhaps three feet in diameter and a foot or so in depth is dug in the ground and lined, bottom and sides, with flat stones. A fire of brushwood is then maintained in the hole until the stones are thoroughly heated through, when the embers are re- moved and fresh grass or green leaves (or, failing these, dampened dried grass) are spread upon the hot rocks and ashes. Upon this the bulbs are laid, covered with another layer of verdure or wet hay; | and the whole is then topped with a mound of earth. In this air-tight oven the bulbs are left to steam for a day and a night, or even longer. The pit is then opened and the Camas will be found to be soft, dark brown in color, and sweet—almost chestnutty— in taste. The cooked mass, if pressed into cakes and then dried in the sun, may be preserved for future use.
There are several species of Camas, but the one best known is the botanist’s Camassia esculenta,
23
CaMas (Camassia esculenta)
24
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
Lindl., the plant of the preceding paragraphs. A closely allied species is Camassia Leichtlinii (Baker) Cov., common in northern California and Oregon. White settlers, in the days before their orchards and gardens were established, found in Camas a wel- come addition to their meager and monotonous bill of fare, and Camas pie was a not uncommon dish in many an old time Oregon or California household. Related to the Lily tribe is the Sedge family, of which two or three species are utilizable for human food. One of these is a bulrush of wide occurrence in the United States (Scirpus lacustris, L.), the Far Western form of which is commonly known as Tule. Its tuberous roots are starchy and may be ground, after drying, into a white, nutritious flour. They may also be chewed to advantage by travelers in arid regions as a preventive of thirst. Of more worth, however, are two species of Cyperus—C. rotundus, L., and C. esculentus, L. The former, commonly known as Nut-grass, is a denizen of fields in the Southern Atlantic States; tthe latter, popu- larly called Chufa, is abundant in moist fields on both our seaboards. Both, also, are widely dis- tributed in the Old World. Like all of their genus, they are distinguished by triangular stems, naked ex- cept for a few grass-like leaves at the base, and bear-
29
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
ing at the summit of the stem an umbel of incon- spicuous, purplish-green florets. The dietetic in- terest in them centers in the rootstocks, which bear small tubers of a pleasant, nutty flavor, and both white men and Indians have approved them, as well as the white men’s pigs. The Chufa’s hard tubers, especially, are sweet and tasty, and in some parts of the South have been considered worthy of cultiva- tion, though by reason of rapid increase and difficulty to eradicate, the plant has a tendency to become a bad weed. We get the name Chufa from Spain, where the tubers are used in emulsion as a refresh- ment in the same class with ‘‘almonds in the milk, pasties, strawberries, azaroles, sugar icing and sherbets,’’ according to some lines of a Spanish poem T ran across the other day.?
Of quite restricted occurrence in the United States, but worthy of mention because of its importance, is a member of a peculiar natural order of plants called Cycads. They resemble the palms in some respects and in others the ferns, their leaves, for instance, having a fashion of unrolling from base to apex in the manner of fern croziers. Many species inhabit tropical America, and two reach the southern
1“Almendrucos y pasteles, Chufas, fresas y acerolas, Garapifias y sorbetes.”
27
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
tip of our country, being indigenous to the Florida peninsula. One, known to botanists as Zamia pumila, L., occurs in dense, damp woods of central
S\\\ =a,
=X / F SOOVTEWM |, f
Ki
pulls le ar SO We WPF iK( yy Ss K
a EAN \
FLoRIDA ARROWROOT (Zamia sp.) Florida: the other, Z. Floridana, DC., is a wilding of the open, dry, pine region of the east coast of southern Florida. They are popularly called Coon- tie or Coontah, the Indian name. The stiff, fern- 28
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
like foliage arises in a clump from the crown (at the ground level) of a thick, subterranean stem which is exceedingly rich in starch. A nutritious flour made from the stem- and root-content of Zamia has had some vogue in the shops under the name of Florida Arrowroot. It has long been a staple article of diet with the Seminole Indians, and the plant has even found its way into the literature of juvenile adventure, as readers of boy romances may recall. Similar in name to Coontie—indeed, probably the same name applied to a different food—is Conte or Contee, mentioned by William Bartram? as served to him by the Seminoles, and prepared from the starchy, tuberous roots of the China-brier (Smilax Pseudo-China, L.). This dish was made by chopping up the root, pounding the pieces thoroughly in a mortar, then mixing with water and straining through a sort of basket filter. The sediment was dried and appeared as a fine, reddish meal. A small quantity of this mixed with warm water and honey, says Bartram, ‘‘when cool, becomes a beautiful, delicious jelly, very nourishing and wholesome. They also mix it with fine corn flour, which, being fried in fresh bear’s grease, makes very good hot
2“Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, etc.,” 1773, Chap. VII.
29
(Smilax Pseudo-China)
30
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
cakes or fritters.’’ So, you see, the wilderness as well as the town had its gastronomic delicacies, and dallied with dyspepsia. The China-brier, sometimes . called Bull-brier, is a perennial woody vine of dry thickets from Maryland to the Gulf of Mexico, adorned in autumn with showy umbels of black ber- ries not known to be edible. The whites have used the knotty, tuberous roots as the basis of a home- made rootbeer in association with molasses and parched corn.
Our waters, too, yield some native roots of economic worth. Among these aquatic wildings per- haps the commonest is the Arrowhead (Sagittaria variabilis, Eng.), so called from the shape of its leaves. It is found in swamps, ditches, ponds and shallow waters very generally throughout North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico, flowering in summer with 3- petaled white blossoms arranged in verticels of three. All Indians, whether of the. Atlantic Slope, the Middle West or the Pacific Coast, have set great store by the plant because of its starchy, white tubers, somewhat resembling small potatoes, de- veloped in autumn at the ends of the rootstocks. It is nearly related to a cultivated vegetable of the Chinese—Sagittaria Sinensis, a native of Asia.
31
(Sagittaria variabilis)
32
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
Lewis and Clarke, in their narrative, speak of an island in the Columbia River, which they call Wap- patoo Island, because of the numerous ponds in its interior abounding in the Arrowhead plant, which in the Indian language is termed Wappatoo. Those doughty explorers have given a picturesque descrip- tion of the aboriginal Arrowhead business in the Columbia River country of Oregon as it was a century ago. ‘‘The bulb,’’ to quote from their Nar- rative, ‘‘is a great article of food and almost the staple of commerce on the Columbia. . . . It is col- lected by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes .. . sufficient to contain a single person and several bushels of roots, yet so very light a woman can carry them with ease. She takes one of these canoes into a pond where the water is as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates from the root the bulb which on being freed from the mud rises immediately to the surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe.’’ Roasted or boiled, the tubers become soft, palatable and digestible, and to travelers in the wild make a fairly good substitute for bread.
Also as bread upon the waters is that majestic aquatic, native to quiet streams and ponds of the in- terior United States from the Great Lakes to the
33
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Gulf, the American Lotus or Water Chinquapin (Velumbo lutea, Pers.). It is easily recognized by its huge, round leaves (sometimes two feet across and a favorite sunning place, by the way, for water snakes) lifted high above the water on foot-
Water CHINQUAPIN (Nelumbo lutea)
stalks attached to the center of the concave leaf, and
its showy, pale yellow, papery flowers of numerous
petals curving upward to be succeeded by curious,
flat-topped, pitted seed-vessels. It is an American
cousin of the famous lotus of India and oriental ro-
mance. To the American Indian, however, it seems 34
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
never to have appealed as a flower of contemplation, but quite prosaically as an addition—and an im- portant one—to his dinner table. In this réle he found it trebly useful: first, because of the young leaves and footstalks which may be turned to ac- count in the same way as spinach; secondly, because of the ripened seeds which, roasted or boiled, are palatable and nutritious with a taste that has given rise to the popular name Water Chinquapin; and thirdly, because of the large tubers, weighing some- times half a pound each, which, when baked, are sweet and mealy with a flavor somewhat like a sweet potato. This is the plant whose flower is rather exuberantly referred to by Longfellow in ‘‘Evan- geline’’:
“Resplendent in beauty, the lotus Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen.”
Though the customary habitat of this Nelumbo is the Mississippi basin, some isolated stations for it are known near the north Atlantic coast, notably in the Connecticut and Delaware Valleys, suggesting the view that it may have been introduced into such localities and cultivated by the Indian inhabitants. However the fact may be, its value as a food source is such as would have warranted such introduction.
35
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
The aroids—a plant family abundant in the tropics and of which several species, as the taro of the Pacific, possess nutritious, starchy, tuberous roots of importance as human foods—are represented in the United States by two or three plants of proved value. One of these is the Golden Club (Orontium aquaticum, L.), whose flower spikes of a rich, bright yellow, lifted above velvety, green, strap-like leaves from which water rolls as from a duck’s back, are a familiar sight in the spring in ponds and marshes along the Atlantic coast. The bulbous rootstock, when cooked, is possessed of considerable nutriment, but owing to its deep seat in the muck is difficult of extraction. The ripened seeds, which resemble peas, are more easily gathered, and both whites and Indians have included them in their diet. Accord- ing to Peter Kalm, an observant and inquisitive Swede whose book of travels in the North American Colonies in 1748 is still an interesting narrative to any who enjoy a look into the vanished past, the dried seeds, not the fresh, should be used, and they must be boiled and re-boiled repeatedly before they are fit to eat; yet his Swedish acquaintances thought it worth their while to do so.
Of even greater interest is another aroid, the Arrow Arum or Virginia Tuckaho (Peltandra Vir-
36
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
ginica, [L] Kunth, and perhaps the nearly related species P. alba, Raf., of the Southern States, a plant with large, arrow-shaped leaves and inconspicuous flowers enveloped in a green spathe. Peltandra Vir- gimica is common in shallow waters of the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Florida. I have never dug up the rootstock, about which I find the recorded descriptions differ. Havard, in his ‘‘Food Plants of the North American Indians,’’ describes it, doubt- less rightly, as short, deep-seated, sometimes six inches in diameter and weighing five or six pounds. As in the case of all aroids, the raw flesh of the root- stock is exceedingly acrid, indeed poisonous; but when dried and thoroughly cooked, it is found to have lost this objectionable principle, and in this state is a starchy food of proved nutrition. I think it is this plant that is meant in Purchas’s Pilgrimage, where in the delicious English of the day record is made of the Virginians’ ‘‘Tockawhough . . . of the greatness and taste of a potato, which passeth a fiery purgation before they may eate it, being poison whiles it is raw.’’ The approved treatment appears to have been to steam it in the aboriginal heated pit, covered over with earth and left undisturbed for a day or two. Similarly the familiar Jack-in-the-Pul- pit (Arisaema triphyllum, Torr.), whose small, 37
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
turnip-shaped corm, bitten into raw, stings the tongue like red hot needles; becomes thoroughly tamed when dried and cooked, and its starchy con-
POO lie t
JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT f (Arisaema triphyllum)
tent was once a source of bread to the Seneca In- dians.
The name Tuckaho has also been applied to a sub- 38
EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS
terranean fungus (Pachyma Cocos, Fries), often found attached to old tree roots in the Southern States. It resembles roughly a cocoanut, though sometimes of more irregular shape. Inside the brown rind is a firm, white meat, which would be quite insipid, except for a trace of sweetness that is present. Its most common name is Indian Bread, because of the Indian use of it as a food. It is de- void of starch and seems of questionable nutritive value. Another subterranean parasite, though not a fungus, that is of genuine worth as an edible, is the curious Sand Food (Ammobroma Sonorae, Torr.), abundant in sandhills of southern Arizona and across the Mexican line in the dunes bordering on the Gulf of California, where it is called camote de los médanos. It consists underground of a slender, fleshy, leafless but scaly stem, two to three feet long, while above the sand during the flowering season in the spring is a small, funnel-like top on which the tiny, purple blossoms appear. After flowering, the overground part withers and disappears, and the plant presents no sign of its existence except to the experts who know where to dig. The subterranean stem is tender, juicy and sweet—a refreshing and luscious morsel, meat and drink in one. It may be eaten either raw or roasted, and is relished by red- 39
USEFUL WILD PLANTS men and white alike. Mr. Carl Lumholtz in his in- teresting book ‘‘New Trails in Mexico’’ tells of an Indian who lived almost entirely on Ammobroma, being able to find it out of season—a remarkable testimony to the nutritiousness of the plant and the abstemiousness of the Indian!
The creeping rootstocks of the common Cat-tail (Typha latifolia, L.) which covers great areas of our swamp lands throughout the United States, hold a nutritious secret, too, for they contain a core of al- most solid starch. They were dug and dried in for- mer times by Indians, who ground them into a meal. A recent analysis of such meal by one of the Gov- ernment chemists showed it to contain about the same amount of protein as is in rice- and corn- flours, but less fat. It may make a useful mixture with the ordinary flours, and be substituted for corn- starch in puddings, as it seems entirely palatable.
40
CHAPTER III
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE, AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN UTILIZED
The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush Lays her full mess before you. Shakespeare.
HE Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru
brought to the knowledge of the white race a number of vegetable foods that are to-day on every American table—such as Indian corn, the potato, the pepper, and certain varieties of beans. Others are still unknown to the world at large. Among the latter that Cortés found in every-day use in Mexico was a square-stemmed, blue-flowered herb, which the chroniclers of that time called Chian or Chia. It seems to have ranked in popularity with staples like maize, frijoles, maguey, cacao and chili; and was grown with these in the fields and floating gardens of the Aztecs, for the sake of the small but numerous nutritious seeds of a pleasant, nutty flavor. Writers on the products of the New World
41
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
in the first couple of centuries of the Spanish domina- tion always speak of Chia with respect. Later, when upper California came in for settlement, the diarist of Portola’s expedition to the Bay of San Francisco specifies it as among the gifts offered by the Indians to their white visitors; and archeologists, grubbing in prehistoric graves in Southern California, have turned up deposits of the seed left as viaticum of departed souls, which attest the antiquity of its use within the limits of the United States. Even to-day, shopkeepers in the Spanish quarters of our own Southwestern cities as well as street venders in the towns of Mexico include Chia as part of their stock in trade.
One wonders what this all but forgotten food can be.
It is the name applied to at least five or six dis- tinct species of plants, of somewhat different aspects, most of them belonging to the genus Salvia. The seeds are flattish and more or less shining, suggest- ing small flaxseed, of whose character they some- what partake, being oily and mucilaginous. For human consumption they should be parched and ground, when they may advantageously be added to corn-meal, and this mixture made with water into a mush was a favorite item in the old Mexican
42
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
dietary. Some of the present-day Indians of Southern California mix Chia meal with ground wheat, imparting to the latter a delicate, nut-like flavor, though the mucilaginous character of Chia disposes the mixture to gumminess. Pure Chia meal, mixed with water, cold or hot, swells to several times the original bulk, and is best eaten as a semi- fluid gruel. Old time travelers in our desert regions used to provide themselves with this meal, which constituted an easily portable and highly nutritious ration eaten dry with the addition of a little sugar.
The species indigenous to the United States are Salvia Columbariae, Benth., and S. carduacea, Benth. Both are winter annuals native to the Pacific side of the continent. The former is the more common, found in dry ground throughout Southern Cali- fornia and adjacent parts of Nevada, Arizona and Mexico. The small, blue flowers, crowded in dense, prickly, globular heads, interrupted upon the stalk (which passes through the midst like a skewer), ap- pear from March to June, and the seeds are ripe a month or so later. They are easily gathered by bending the stalks over a bowl or finely woven basket, and beating the heads with a paddle or fan, which shatters out the seeds. That is the Indian method; but when the plants grow plentifully, as
43
Cara (Salvia Columbariae)
44
, WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
they sometimes do as thick as grass in a field, or as they may be made to do by sowing the seed in cul- tivated ground, they can be cut, threshed and win- nowed like flax or wheat.
A wild food plant that has had a remarkable: in- fluence in geographic nomenclature is the Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica, L.). It is the folle avoine of the French voyageurs, and the mendmin of the North- west Indians, to one tribe of whom—the Menominees —it gave a name. Mr. Albert E. Jenks, whose exhaustive monograph, ‘‘The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes,’ is a mine of information about the plant, instances over 160 places (counties, townships, towns, railway stations, rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds) which have borne a name synony- mous with this same Wild Rice. It is of the same family as the rice of commerce, and is a species of annual grass found growing by the acre, even the hundreds of acres, in ponds, swamps and still water- ways, both fresh and brackish, in virtually every State of the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, and also in Japan and China. It is exceptionally abundant in the regions bordering on the Great
1 An important use of Chia is as the basis of a soft drink. See
the chapter on Beverage Plants. 2 Printed in the 19th Ann. Report, Bur. Amer. Ethnology.
45
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Witp Rice (Zizania aquatica)
Hi
Lakes both in American and Canadian territory—a
beautiful, stately grass, rising from two to twelve
feet above the water and bearing in summer ample
panicles of delicate, yellowish-green blossoms of two 46
An Indian of the Great Lakes Region threshing wild rice by means of a dasher-like stick.
(Courtesy of the Bureau of American Ethnology.)
\
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
sexes. These are succeeded in September by the purplish spikes of ripened seeds occupying the tip of the panicle. The seeds are slender and cylindri- cal, one-half to three-fourths of an inch long, within a long-bearded husk and attached so loosely to the branchlet that bears them that they drop at a touch. They must needs be gathered, therefore, with great care or many may be lost. The Indians customarily harvest them just before they attain complete ripe- ness, visiting the rice swamps with canoes, which they push ahead of them, pulling the fruiting stalks over the hold of the canoe and beating the seeds into it with a stick. The grain is then taken ashore where it is dried, either in the sun or by artificial heat upon racks under which a slow fire is kept burn- ing. The husk must then be threshed off, which may be done by pounding with a heavy-ended stick in a bucket; and finally the chaff is got rid of by winnowing. ‘The seeds are then ready for use or for storing away. Readers of old journals of the so- journers in the Northwestern wilderness will recall the important réle played by such stores of Wild
3 The best results are attained by first tying the standing stalks together at the head into small bunchés. This is done a couple of weeks before maturity and serves to conserve the grain and
lessen the depredations of the birds—particularly the bobolinks— which are famous rice eaters.
47
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Rice (or Wild Oats, as the seed was as often but improperly called) in fighting hunger through the long, remorseless, northern winters.
The food value of Wild Rice is high. It is rich in carbohydrates (starch and sugar) and is also well stocked with flesh-producing proteids. Indeed, as a nutrient, it seems quite in the class of its cousin, the cultivated rice; and, like the latter, it swells with boiling, so that a little goes along way. The Indians use it generally in mixture with stews. If cooked alone, two parts of water to one of rice is the usual proportion, and from a half to an entire hour is re- quired for boiling it. White people who test Wild Rice usually pronounce it palatable, particularly in the form of a mush served with cream and sugar, and Mr. Jenks reports a wilderness soup made of Wild Rice and blueberries that sounds as if it ought to be good even in New York.
Two other water plants should be noted for their valuable edible seeds. One is the Water Chinqua- pin, mentioned in the previous chapter because of its useful roots, but which owes its popular name to the more obvious virtue of its palatable, nutlike seeds. These, boiled or baked, are considered by many the equal of chestnuts. The other is the Great Yellow Pond Lily of the northwestern Pacific Coast
48
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
(Nuphar polysepalum, Engelm.), whose globose, yellow flowers, sometimes as much as five inches in diameter, are a frequent and charming sight afloat on the bosom of shallow lakes and marshy ponds of the coast region from northern California to British Columbia. The globular seed vessels are full grown in summer, and it is the practice of the Indians to gather them in July and August, and, after drying the pods, to extract the seeds, which may then be kept indefinitely. These are commonly prepared for consumption by tossing them about in a frying pan over a fire until they swell and crack open some- what as popcorn does, which they resemble in taste. They may be eaten thus out of hand, or ground into meal for making bread or mush.*
The common Sunflower of our gardens, whose monster heads appeal to esthetes because of a par- ticular style of languid beauty they possess, and to birds and chickens because of their luscious, oleagin- ous seeds, is but a coddled form of one of our com- monest wild plants—the Annual Sunflower (Heli- anthus annuus, L.). This species is indigenous throughout western North America, and sheets summer and autumnal plains for miles with the gen-
4Coville, “Notes on Plants Used by the Klamath Indians of Oregon.”
49
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
erous gold of its cheery blossoms. The dark gray or blackish seeds of the wild plant are much smaller than those of the cultivated form, but are exceed: ingly numerous, with a white, oily, floury content that is rich in nutriment. They used to form an im- portant part of the dietary of the Plains Indians, who sometimes cultivated the plants amid their corn. The ripe seeds were parched and ground into meal, and bread made of this meal has been spoken of with approbation by white travelers—even as the equal of corn bread. There can be no doubt of its value in situations where the flours of civilization are difficult to procure. As a source of oil sunflower seed is by no means insignificant, yielding, according to Havard, about twenty per cent. of an excellent table article. To most of us, indeed, the Wild Sun- flower is a plant of unsuspected uses: its stalks possess a fibre of some worth and its flowers are good honey producers as well as a basis of a yellow dye said to be fast.®
Tn our Spanish Southwest the term pinole is in use
5 Helianthus annuus is a coarse, much branched plant, three to six feet tall, the rough stem frequently mottled, the root (being annual) easily pulled up. The large flower heads are yellow-rayed with a dark center that is an inch or so across. Leaves petioled, ovate, six inches or more long, with toothed edges, rough to the touch. The seeds of the closely related species, H. petiolaris, Nutt., are similarly useful.
50
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
to mean meal made from the seeds of wild plants. Of these a great number have been utilized in past times for this purpose by the aborigines, and still are to some extent by old Indians whose taste for the pabulum of the long ago has not been lost. There is, it seems, a certain tang to the native vegetable foods of the wild comparable to the gaminess of wild flesh, that meets a need in untamed man not satis- fied by the suaver products of civilization. The preparation of pinole is in a general way as follows: Provided with a large gathering basket of close weave and a paddle, usually of rough basket-work, the harvester beats the seeds—one sort at a time —into the basket, until a sufficient quantity is ob- tained. The chaff is then separated by sifting or by winnowing in a light breeze, and any prickles or hairiness natural to the seeds are singed off by drop- ping hot pebbles or live coals among them in a shal- low basket and tossing all about at a lively rate. More prosaically, the same end may be attained with a frying pan kept agitated over a flame. This singeing process, moreover, serves to parch or partially cook the seeds, which are then ground in a mortar and the husks winnowed out. The resid- uum of meal, mixed with a little salt, may be eaten dry without further preparation. Indians in old 51
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
times frequently made forced marches of a day on no other ration than a small sack of pinole, con- sumed in instalments as they traveled.® More often, however, it is moistened with water and eaten as mush or thinner as a gruel, or baked in the form of cakes. While the different sorts of seeds are col- lected and ground separately, it is not unusual to combine them for consumption, as taste may dictate.”
It would be tedious to enumerate all the plants which have been found of sufficient food value to grind into pinole, but the following may be men- tioned as of especial interest and worth:
Of wide distribution in our Far West are two annual species of the homely Goosefoot or Pigweed. One is Chenopodium Fremontu, Wats., with more or less mealy leaves of triangular shape, a plant usually a foot or two high but sometimes attaining in over- flowed lands a height of six feet or over; the other is C. leptophyllum, Nutt., with very narrow leaves that are scarcely mealy. The latter species occurs also in seashore sands of the Atlantic coast from Con- necticut to New Jersey. The inconspicuous green
6 For white consumption, the digestibility of this ration is im- proved by thorough and repeated grinding and parching after each operation.
7V. K. Chesnut: “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California.” Printed as Contributions from the U.S, National Herbarium, Vol. VII, No. 3.
52
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
flowers of both species, clustered in panicled spikes, are succeeded in late summer and autumn by an abundance of small black seeds of farinaceous con- tent. It stimulates our respect for these humble, weedy plants to know that the seeds of an allied species, Chenopodium Quinoa, have from the dawn of history been a valued food of the native Peruvians and Bolivians, and have been cultivated by those races. The Zuni Indians of New Mexico, according to Stevenson, have a tradition that the seeds of C. leptophyllum were one of their principal foodstuffs in the infancy of the race before the gods sent them the corn plant. Afterwards, Chenopodium meal mixed with corn meal and salt, made into a stiff batter and moulded into balls or pats and steamed, became a favorite dish with epicurean Zufiis.2 The seeds of a prostrate, mat-like Amaranth (Amaran- thus blitoides, Wats.), a weedy plant with spikelets of greenish, chaffy flowers, native to the Rocky Mountain region and westward, also formed an im- portant item in the ancient diet of the Zuifis, who believed that the original seeds of it had been brought up from the underworld at the time of the race’s emergence into the light of day. In later years, the
8“Ethnobotany of the Zufi Indians.” 30th Ann. Report Bur. Amer. Ethnology.
53
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
meal made from these seeds has been used, like that from Chenopodium, in admixture with corn meal. Similarly useful to desert Indian's are the seeds of species of Saltbush (Atriplex canescens, James, A. lentiformis, Wats., A. Powellii, Wats., A. conferti- folia, Wats., etc.).
White Sage (Audibertia polystachya, Benth.), one of the most famous of Pacific Coast honey plants, produces slender, wandlike thyrses of pale blossoms whose seeds, though small and husky, are exceed- ingly numerous and rich in oil. They are still gathered by Southern California Indians, who bend the plants over a large basket and beat the seeds into it by striking with a seed-beater, as described before when treating of Chia. The seeds, mixed with wheat, are parched in a frying pan, and all is reduced to a fine meal by pounding in a mortar. This stirred in water with a sprinkling of salt is then ready to be eaten, or drunk, according as the mixture is thick or thin. It, too, is called pinole. The sage seeds have much the taste of Chia, the botanical relationship be- ing close, but they are not mucilaginous.
Several species of wild grasses are utilizable for pinole. One of these is the Wild Oat (Avena fatua, L.), suspected of being the progenitor of the culti- - vated oat, and abundant in certain parts of the West, 54
Red Maple (Acer rubrum), the source of a dark blue dye in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists. (See page 226.)
(Courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardens.)
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
particularly on the Pacific Coast where extensive areas are covered with it as with a crop. The seed resembles the cultivated grain, but is so hairy as to stick in one’s throat and choke one. After thoroughly singeing off the hairs in a pan or basket tray, the grain may be reduced to flour, and used like ordinary oat-flour. Another pinole grass is Elymus triticoides, Buckl., locally known as ‘‘wild wheat’’ and ‘‘squaw grass.’’ It is a tall, slim grass with usually glaucous stems, and grows densely in moist meadows and alkaline soil throughout the Pacific Coast and eastward to Colorado and Arizona. An allied species, more robust, with very dense flower-spikes of a foot long and larger seeds, serves a similar purpose. It is commonly called ‘‘rye grass’’ and is the Elymus condensatus, Presl., of the botanists. It, too, is abundant in damp, alkaline ground and along streams throughout the Far West, and Mr. Coville ® has suggested that it may be worthy of experimentation as a cultivated grain for that region.
A Southwestern grass of wide distribution, par- ticularly in the deserts, in sandy places (both moist and dry) and on arid hillsides, is the so-called Indian
9 “Plants Used by the Klamath Indians,” Washington, Gov’t Print- ing Office, 1897. -.
55
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Millet or Sand-grass (Eriocoma cuspidata, Nutt.). it is a perennial, growing in bunches a foot or two high, with peculiar panicles whose thread-like, twist- ing branchlets are tipped with husks containing small, blackish seeds, which have long been valued by desert Indians for flour making. This is one of the wild grains upon which the Zufii Indians of New Mexico have been in the habit of relying in times of failure of their cultivated crops; and Dr. Edward Palmer tells of parties of Zufiis being seen as far as ten miles from their villages carrying enormous loads of these seeds for winter provision. Still an- other desert grass with edible seeds, but restricted in its distribution in our country to Southern Cali- fornia, is Panicum Urvilleanum, Kunth, which the desert Coahuillas call song-wal. It is a stout per- ennial, one to two feet high, the whole plant, includ- ing the seeds, more or less hairy, and is quite near of kin to the millet of the Old World, whose nutri- tious properties it shares.
Among the various gummy plants of the Pacific Coast known there as Tarweeds is one called Chile Tarweed (Madia sativa, Molina). It is a heavy- scented annual, one to three feet high, sticky and hairy, with rather narrow, entire leaves, and incon- spicuous, pale yellow flowers of the daisy type, the
56
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
rays barely a quarter of an inch long, expanding only at evening and early morning. This and some kindred species have been utilized by the California Indians for pinole. The Chile Tarweed has a spe- cial interest in the fact that in Chile, where it is also abundant, it has been cultivated from very early times. The seeds, when scalded, yield under com- pression a considerable percentage of a mild, agree- able oil, suitable for table purposes, soap-making, and notably for lubricating machinery, as it does not solidify short of 10° Fahr. Some eighty years ago, the plant was introduced into cultivation in Europe, where, I believe, it is still grown to some extent, and an oil-cake is made of the seeds for cattle.
To the traveler in the hill country of central and Southern California and western Arizona a familiar shrub is a species of wild plum with shining, ever- green, holly-like leaves (Prunus ilicifolia, Walp.), maturing in autumn an abundance of crimson or dark purple fruits in size and appearance like small damson plums. They are disappointing, however, in that they are almost entirely stone, though such thin covering of pulp as there is, is pleasant enough to the taste. It is an interesting fact in connection with the Indian’s inventive genius that this fruit be-
57
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
came long ago one of his important food sources; though it was not the pulp but the apparently hope- less pit that was turned to principal account. Gath- ering the plums in late summer, the Indians would
wat Y ge IsLay PN be SiN’ ‘icifoli SAO, EE I pS (Prunus ilicifolia) ON.) AIS Nel 2 PR ee ; ; < ain a» a f
spread them in the sun until thoroughly dry, when
the stones would be cracked and the kernels ex-
tracted. These.are bitter and astringent like acorns,
and at first blush as unpromising as the uncracked
pits themselves. When rid of that deleterious prin-
ciple, however, the kernels are nutritious and diges- 58
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
tible (by Indian organs, at least), and have always formed a cherished item in the native dietary, wherever the shrub grows. It is quite generally known by its Spanish-Indian name islay. Barrows, writing of this food,” states that the kernels are crushed in a mortar, leached in the sand basket (pre- sumably like acorn-meal) and boiled as mush; but an intelligent old Indian of Mission Santa Inés, one Fernando Cardenas, who is familiar with the customs practised by Southern California Indians, has in- formed me that the process as observed by him was to put the unground kernels into a bag and dip the sack in hot water again and again, until the meats became sweet. They were then ground, fashioned into balls and eaten so with great gusto. As I have personally never seen either process, I record both for the curious to test for themselves.
It would seem reasonable to expect edible seeds of many of the wild members of the useful Pea family, which is abundantly represented in all parts of the country. As a matter of fact, few seem to have been found worth while even by Indians of the most catholic taste. The Groundnut, Apios tube- rosa, has been mentioned in a previous chapter as
10“The Ethnobotany of the Coahuilla Indians of Southern Cali-
fornia.”
59
Hog PEANUT (Amphicarpaea monoica)
60
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
having been utilized, both seeds and tubers; and something should be said of another leguminous plant popularly called Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica, Nutt.). It is a slender vine with trifoliate leaves, the stem clothed with brownish hairs, and is frequently met with in damp woodlands and thickets throughout the eastern half of the United States. In late summer it is graced with small bunches of pale purple or whitish pea-like blossoms, pen- dulous from the leaf-axils, while from near the root solitary, inconspicuous flowers on thread-like stems put out and bury themselves loosely in the ground, or creep shyly beneath a covering of fallen leaves. The showy upper blossoms are mostly abortive, though a few manage to develop short pods contain- ing three or four small purple seeds apiece, edible when cooked. Of much greater worth are the sub- terranean seed-vessels which bear a single large pea in each. These peas are quite nutritious. They are mature in September and October, but retain their vitality throughout the winter, so that they may be dug even in the spring if one knows where to look for them.
The most valuable of all our wild legumes is doubtless the Mesquit-bean, the algarroba of the Mexicans. It is the product of a well-known tree
61
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
(Prosopis juliflora, DC., and its varieties) abundant throughout the arid region on both sides of the Mexican border. It is, indeed, the characteristic tree of the Southwestern deserts, giving to those gray wastes touches of living color very grateful to the eyes starving for the sight of a really vivid green. The pods, in shape and size resembling string beans, are produced abundantly in drooping clusters, which, ripening in late summer, become lemon yellow. The juicy pulp, in which the hard, bony seeds are embedded, is exceedingly sweet, containing, according to Havard, more than half its Mesquir weight of assimilable nutritive (Prosopis juliflora) : Ss : properties, of which sugar is in the proportion of from twenty-five to thirty per cent. All stock thrives on the pods, and it is on this account rather than on any appeal to his own stomach that the white man’s regard for them is grounded; but upon the Indian, who has ever a sweet tooth, they have a strong claim as human food. There is before me, as I write, a jar of coarse mesquit 62
SSSSMQ Y ff UU tar, \
SN \ 2SS\
; oi Be Py *)
er Se
ee (SRA ASA E's, p) SOP SESS teh PSM. Oss ¢ errs he
Tre aye" Dery
MESQuIT (Prosopis juliflora)
63
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
meal, and it is as cloyingly fragrant as so much mo- lasses. Mr. Edward H. Davis, of Mesa Grande, California, to whom I am indebted for the specimen, writes concerning it:
‘‘The mesquit meal is used to-day by the desert Indians the same as centuries ago. The pod is pounded up in wooden mortars made from the mesquit-tree trunk hollowed out by fire and set firmly in the ground. A long, slender, stone pestle is used to pound with. The beans are so brittle that enough for dinner can be prepared in eight to ten minutes. The meal is mixed with water and eaten so, being sweet and nourishing. The edible part is the pulp of the pods only; the seeds are not diges- tible by either man or beast, but will pass through the digestive tract unchanged. However, by pour- ing warm water over the seeds a sweetish, rather lemon-tasting drink is made and much relished by the desert Coahuillas.”’
The Pima Indians of Southern Arizona formerly used mesquit meal as a makeshift for sugar, mingling it with their wheat or corn pinole to sweeten the latter.11 The raw beans picked from the tree may be chewed with enjoyment and some nutritive profit,
_ 4John Russell Bartlett, “Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, New Mexico, California, ete.” Vol. II: 217.
64
WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE
as one travels. The quality of mingled acidity and sweetness which they possess before perfect ma- turity acts also as a thirst preventive, much as do the pods of the carob-tree of the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, the Spanish term algarroba applied in Mexico and our Southwest to the Mesquit bean, is a case of transference, algarrobo being the word used_in Spain for the carob-tree. A feature of the Mesquit-bean, by the way, to be reckoned with, is the fact that the pods are a favorite resort of «a species of pea-weevil (Bruchus) for the deposit of their eggs. As a consequence Mesquit meal is par- ticularly liable to infestation by these small beings to a degree that is somewhat of a shock to white sensibilities, though the Indians are indifferent to their presence; yet, I suppose, after all, it is no worse than skippers in over-ripe cheese, which some white epicures delight in.'?
The Mexicans make a sort of gruel, called atole de mezquite, by boiling the mesquit pods, mashing them to a pulp in fresh water, and straining. A nutritious beverage is thus obtained, agreeable to some tastes. So altogether useful is the mesquit tree that it is not surprising to learn that it figures
12 A useful by-product of the Mesquit-tree is a gum that exudes from the bruised bark and may be used for the purpose of gum arabic, which it much resembles.
65
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
in the folklore of some regions where it grows. In Mexico a curious tradition is current to this effect: Long before the Spanish Conquest, the Apostle Thomas, in his heavenly home, became in- terested in the Aztecs, and descending to earth appeared to them in the guise of the Mexican hero- god Quetzacoatl and preached the gospel. The Aztecs heard the doctrine but coldly, and so San Tomas in most unchristian dudgeon departed, leav- ing the curse of sterility upon the plain of Andhuac and turning all its cacao trees into mesquites, which remain mesquites to this day!
Closely related to the Mesquit-bean and of similar utility is the Screw-bean, called by the Mexicans tornilla. It is a curious, slender, spirally-twisted pod, borne in clusters, upon a small tree (Prosopis pubescens, Benth.) having much the same geographi- cal range as the mesquit. The Screw-bean is even more sugary than the Mesquit-bean, and it may be made by boiling to yield a very fair sort of molasses. Water in which a small quantity of the meal is soaked makes a palatable and nutritious beverage. In mak- ing Screw-bean meal, the Indians grind the whole pods, seeds and all.
66
CHAPTER IV
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD AND SOME OTHER WILD NUTS
Happy age to which the ancients gave the name of golden... . None found it needful, in order to obtain sustenance, to re- sort to other labor than to stretch out his hand and take it from the sturdy live-oak, which liberally invited him.
Don Quixote.
ERTAIN nuts growing wild in the United
States, such as the chestnut, the hickories, the pecan, the beech-nut and the walnuts, have secured so firm a place in our civilized dietary that every one knows them, and they need not be discussed here. Perhaps, though, we have not exhausted all their culinary possibilities. For instance, William Bar- tram tells us that the Creek Indians in his day pounded the shellbark nuts, cast them into boiling water and then passed the mass through a very fine strainer. The thicker, oily part of the liquid thus preserved was rich like fresh cream, and was called by a name signifying ‘‘hickory milk.’’? It formed an ingredient in much of their cookery, especially in
67
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
hominy and corn cakes. Peter Kalm speaks of a similar practice observed by him with hickory nuts and black walnuts. A cooking oil is also said to have been obtained from acorns by some Eastern tribes, the nuts being pounded, boiled in water containing maple-wood ashes, and the oil skimmed off.
Of the nuts of our country unregarded by the white population from the standpoint of human food value, the noble genus of oaks supplies the most im- portant. Every farmer realizes the worth of acorns for fattening hogs, but in America only the Indians, | I believe, have taken seriously to utilizing them for human consumption; and it is significant that among the fattest of all Indians are those—the Californians —whose staple diet from prehistoric times has been acorn meal. There is, to be sure, a difference in acorns. All are not bitter. Several species of oak produce nuts whose sweetness and edibility in the raw state make it easy to believe the acorn’s cousin- ship to the chestnut and beechnut. In this class are the different sorts of Chestnut Oaks, easily recog- nized by the resemblance of their leaves to the foliage of the chestnut tree; and of these perhaps the best, in respect of acorns, is Quercus Michauati, Nutt. —commonly known as Basket Oak or Cow Oak. It is a large tree, indigenous to the Southern Atlantic
68
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
States in situations near streams and swamps, and ripening in September or October plump, sweet nuts an inch and a half long.
Oddly enough it is not the sweet acorns but the bitter that have played the really noteworthy part in aboriginal history. The Indians of the Pacific Coast did not become maize growers until after the white occupation of their country, preferring to accept from the hand of indulgent Nature such nutrients as came ready made, among which the abounding fruit- age of extensive oak forests formed, and still forms, a conspicuous part. The acorns of all species of oaks indigenous to that coast are more or less stored with tannin, which imparts to the taste an unwhole- some bitterness and astringency as disagreeable to red men as to white. Some inventive Indian—and doubtless it was a woman, the aboriginal harvester as well as cook—long ago hit upon a simple but effective way of extracting the deleterious principle; that is, washing the finely ground acorns in water. ‘The process of preparing the acorn for human use, as still practiced in some parts of California, is as follows:
In autumn when the nuts are ripe but not yet fallen, they are gathered in baskets and barley sacks, brought home and laid in the sun to dry. Some are
69
USEFUL WILD PLANTS then stored away for future use in the house or in huge storage baskets set outdoors on platforms that are raised on legs above the reach of rodents, and form a picturesque feature of primitive rancherias. The acorns for immediate consumption are divested of the shells by cracking, and the kernels then re- duced to the finest possible powder by grinding in the stone mortar, it having been found that digesti- bility depends upon thorough grinding.
The next step is to get rid of the bitterness, which persists through all the milling.
Every acorn-eating family maintains beside the nearest water a primitive leaching plant, varying more or less in the details of its make-up, but con- sisting primarily of a loose, concave nest of twigs, leaves or pine needles raised a foot or two above the ground and ensuring perfect drainage. Over this is stretched a piece of porous cloth—a clean burlap will do—sagging, basin-like, in the middle, upon which the meal is spread evenly about half an inch thick. Water, warm or cold, is then poured carefully over this and allowed to filter through, more being added from time to time until the bitter- ness is entirely leached away. The length of time required for this differs according to the variety of acorns used, some being less bitter than others.
70
‘s}UdPOI JO suoTyepaidap sy} [yeIsatOy 0} peyeagja ase Ady], ‘synu-aurd pue sur09se SurAtasoid JOT sjayseq oseIOJS S,UeIPU] UTeJUNOW UsojsoM V
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
Two or three hours usually suffice. The result is a doughy mass, which is then transferred to a pot with water added, and boiled up for mush. It swells in cooking to about twice its original bulk, and when done is a pale chocolate color. In taste it is rather flat but with a suggestion of nuttiness that becomes distinctly agreeable even to some white palates. Judging from my own experience with it, I should pronounce it about as good as an average breakfast- food mush. Cream and sugar and a pinch of salt are considered needful concomitants by most white consumers. Formerly the Indians baked a sort of bread from acorn dough in their primitive fireless cooker—that is, in shallow pits first lined with thor- oughly heated rocks. For this purpose the dough was.usually, though not always, mixed with red clay in proportion of about five per cent., according to Mr. Chesnut, from whose valuable monograph, “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California,’? I have drawn for this statement,— the purpose of the clay being apparently to remove the last trace of tannin remaining in the dough. Upon a bed of green leaves placed at the bottom of the pit the dough was laid, covered with another layer of leaves, upon which a super-layer of heated stones was put, and all then covered with dirt, to 71
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
remain over night. When removed after about twelve hours of slow cooking, the bread was coal black if the admixture of clay had been used or red- dish brown otherwise, and of the consistency of soft cheese, hardening, however, with exposure. Such bread is oily and heavy, but noticeably sweet in taste. The latter characteristic is doubtless due to sugar developed by the prolonged, slow steaming.
Dr. C. Hart Merriam, in the ‘‘ National Geographic Magazine’’ for August, 1918, tells of a simpler way of making acorn bread as observed by him. The hot acorn-mush is dipped, a small quantity at a time, from the general stock and plunged into cold water, which causes the lumps to contract and stiffen. The ‘‘loaves’’ so made are then placed on a rock to harden and dry out, after which they may be kept for weeks until consumed. The same au- thority speaks of the excellence of a bread made from a mixture of acorn-flour and corn-meal, in the proportion of one of the former to four of the latter.
While the acorns of any species may be utilized for human need, there is a distinct choice exercised by the Indians, the preference being based appar- ently on relative richness in oil and lowness in tannin. The best liked, according to my observation, are
72
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
the Kellogg or California Black oak (Quercus Cali- fornica, [Torr.] Cooper), the Coast Live oak (Q. agrifolia, Nee), the Valparaiso or Canyon Live oak (Q. chrysolepis, Lieb), and the colossal Valley White oak (Q. lobata, Nee). An analysis of acorn meal made from the last named species is quoted by Chesnut as showing in percentage 5.7 protein, 18.6 fat, 65 carbohydrates (starch, sugar, etc.). Though the Californians are regarded as among the lowest of our North American aborigines in native culture, their self-devised treatment of the acorn to make of it a wholesome food staple is entitled to the greatest respect. Stephen Powers, in his classic work on the Tribes of California, finds in one use of acorn mush an aboriginal discovery of the principle of the Prus- sian pea-sausage; and quotes the practice of a central California tribe, who, upon starting a journey, would pack in their burden baskets a quantity of the mush. When stopping for refreshment, it was only necessary to dilute a portion of this with water and dinner was ready. A squaw, the traditional burden- bearer, could carry thirty pounds, enough to last two persons perhaps a fortnight. Naturally so im- portant an element as the acorn in the tribal life became associated with religious ceremonial as well as incorporated in native poetry; and the approach 73
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
of the autumnal gathering of the nuts was celebrated with dances and songs of thanksgiving and rejoicing. One of these songs, quoted by Powers, is Englished thus:
“The acorns come down from heaven; I plant the short acorns in the valley; I plant the long acorns in the valley;
I sprout, I, the black acorn sprout;
I sprout.”
Such dances (and they still have some vogue in the remoter parts of the State) were night affairs in the open, stamped out in the glow of blazing log fires to the accompaniment of minor melodies of fascinating appeal, the words of the songs repeated endlessly and emphasized with dramatic gestures, until the morning star appeared in the east. To this day the oak groves in those parts of California where any considerable Indian population still lingers are invested with traditional acorn rights, and recognized by general consent as the harvest grounds of particular communities, none poaching upon the preserves of another.
Traveling in mountainous regions of the West where coniferous forests prevail, one sometimes comes upon the remains of large camp-fires strewn roundabout with charred pine-cones and twig ends.
74
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
These are associated with another sort of nut? har- vest, that of the Pifion or Pine-nut, the plump, oily seed of certain species of the Far Western pines. The most esteemed nut-pines are the Two-leaved Pine (Pinus edulis, Engelm.), a low, round-topped tree, generally known by its Spanish name pifion and common from Southern Colorado to Texas and west- _ ward to Arizona and Utah; the closely related One- leaved Pine (P. monophylla, Torr.), the piiion of the Great Basin region and desert slopes of thé Cali- fornia Sierras; the Digger Pine (P. Sabiniana, Dougl.), a widely distributed species of the Cali- fornia foothills and lower mountain slopes; and the stately Sugar Pine (P. Lambertiana, Dougl.), whose huge cones are frequently a foot and a half long or more. The ‘‘nuts’’ of these species vary from one-half to three-quarters of an inch in length, with thin shells easy but rather tedious to crack. The meat is delicious in flavor even to white people, tender, sweet, and highly nutritious. They are, moreover, of easiest digestibility, so that even delicate stomachs are undisturbed by them. Under the name of pifions they are sold in towns through- out the Southwest as well as Mexico, where another
1 The word “nut” is used in this chapter in its popular sense
rather than with botanical accuracy. 19
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
species of nut-pine (Pinus cembroides, Zuce.) is in- digenous. The Parry Pine (P. quadrifolia, Sudw.) is another good nut-pine, abundant in some parts of lower California, but only sparingly found on the United States side of the border. John Muir, in his picturesque way, characterizes the nut-pine forests as ‘‘the bountiful orchards of the red man.’’
Pine seeds are ripe in autumn, and the Indian method of gathering them is to cut or knock the un- opened cones from the trees and then roast them in a camp fire. This serves to dry out the pitch and open the cones, from which the nuts are then easily extracted. The piton harvest among the South- western Indians is a joyous time, and what they do not themselves consume is readily turned into money at the traders’. Dr. Edward Palmer, a veteran botanical collector whose notes are enlivened by many a human touch, describes a scene of this kind which he witnessed among the Cocopahs of Lower California. ‘‘It was an interesting sight to see these children of nature with their dirty, laughing faces, parching and eating the pine nuts . . . by the hand- ful. .. . At last we had the privilege of seeing prim- itive Americans gathering their uncultivated crop from primeval groves.’’ Though edible raw, the nuts are preferably toasted, which may be done very
76
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
comfortably in a vessel kept in motion over a slow fire, as peanuts are heated. Not only is the flavor improved thereby, but the sweetness of the kernel is ensured for a longer time.
The value of the pifion was quickly recognized by the Spanish conquerors of New Mexico, and Fray Alonzo de Benavides in his famous Memorial to the King of Spain (1630) makes particular mention of the Pifion trees, marvelous to him ‘‘because of their nuts so large and tender to crack and the trees and cones so small and the quantity so interminable.’’ It seems that at that early day there was trade in New Mexico pifions with the Mexican capital, a thousand miles away, where, Benavides tells us, they were worth at wholesale twenty-three to twenty-four pesos the fanega. They retail to-day in city shops of our Southwest at about twenty cents per pound.
In taking leave of the pines, a word should be said about the fruits of their cousins, the Junipers of familiar habit. Although reckoned as a conifer, the Juniper bears seed vessels that are not cones in the popular acceptance of that word, but berry-like, due to the growing together of the fleshy cone- scales, with a compact pulp around the seeds. The resinous quality of these ‘‘berries’’ in most species renders them repugnant to the human palate, but in
17
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
a few cases this feature is much reduced and the ‘‘berries’’ are relished because of the sweet flavor of their mealy pulp. In this edible class are the fruits of the California Juniper (Juniperus Cali- fornica, Carr.), the Utah Juniper (J. Utahensis, Lem.), and the Check-barked or Alligator Juniper (J. pachyphlaea, Torr.). The first two are stunted trees or shrubs of arid regions of pure desert. The last is a tree attaining sometimes a height of fifty feet or more, abundant at rather high elevations in Arizona, New Mexico and Southwestern Texas, and remarkable for its thick, hard bark, deeply furrowed and checked in squares. The ‘‘berries’’ of all these species have been approved by Indian palates, and are eaten either raw or dried and ground into a meal and prepared as mush or cakes. Under ne- cessity they might serve to keep body and soul together, those of the Alligator Juniper being con- sidered the best. Cakes made from these are said on good authority to be palatable even to whites, and to have the merit of easy digestibility.
Little known to Americans but possessing a fas- cination all its own is the so-called Wild Hazel, Goat- nut or Sheep-nut, the fruit of a non-deciduous, gray- ish-green shrub, Simmondsia Californica, Nutt., locally abundant along the mountain borders of the
78
JOJOBA (Simmondsia Californica)
79
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
desert in Southern California and extending into Arizona and northern Mexico. It is a distant cousin to the beloved boxwood of old gardens, though none but a botanist would suspect the relationship. The plant is diccious, so that not every individual is seed-bearing—only those possessing pistillate flowers. The capsules are mature in early autumn, and, gaping open, disgorge upon the ground the oily, chocolate-brown seeds, which are of about the size and appearance of hazelnut kernels. These, too, they somewhat resemble in taste, but are much easier of consumption because nature does the cracking for you. They are eaten with avidity by children, Indians, sheep and goats. Mexicans call them jojobas, and in Los Angeles I have seen them in the Spanish quarter in the shops of druggists, who find a steady sale for them for use in promoting the growth of deficient eyebrows! For this purpose, it seems, they are boiled, the oil extracted and this applied externally. The seed’s reputation as a hair restorer, indeed, is rather extended in the South- west. Mexicans in Lower California put it to still another use, which will be mentioned in the chapter - on Beverage Plants.
According to M. Léon Dieguet in ‘‘Revue des Sciences Naturelles Appliquées’’ (October, 1895),
80
THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD
‘‘an analysis of the fire-dried seeds shows them to contain 48.30% of fatty matter. The oil solidifies at 5°, is suitable for food and of good quality, and possesses’ the immense advantage of not turning rancid.’’ The shrub has been recommended for culture in the desert regions of the French Colonies of North Africa.
There is a beautiful little tree called the California Buckeye (Aesculus Californica, Nutt.) which whitens with its fine thyrses of bloom the hillsides of spring near streams in central and northern California. In summer and autumn it acquires another sort of con- spicuousness due to the early dropping of its foliage, baring the limbs even in August. It then becomes a very skeleton of a tree upon which the fruits, hanging thick, look like so many dry, plump figs. The leathery rind of the latter encloses one or two thin-shelled nuts, shiny and reddish brown like those of the tree’s cousins, the Buckeyes of the Middle West. To white folk these nuts, attractive as they appear, seem nevertheless devoid of food possibili- ties; indeed, in their raw state, they are known to be poisonous. That the Indian should have discov- ered how to turn them into fuel for the human machine seems, therefore, even more remarkable than the conversion of the acorn into an edible
81
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
ration. Yet that is what the Indian did, by a method that consists essentially in roasting the nuts and then washing out the poison. One wonders how many prehistoric Californians died martyrs in the perfect- ing of the process. Mr. Chesnut, in his treatise al- ready quoted on California Indian uses of plants, re- cords in detail how the transformation into edibility is accomplished: The Buckeyes are placed in the con- ventional stone-lined baking pit which has been first made hot with a fire; they are then covered over with earth and allowed to steam for several hours, until the nuts have acquired the consistency of boiled potatoes. They may then be either sliced, placed in a basket and soaked in running water for from two to five days (depending upon the thinness of the slices), or mashed and rubbed up with water into a paste (the thin skin being incidentally sepa- rated by this process) and afterwards soaked from one to ten hours in a sand filter, the water as it drains away conveying with it the noxious principle. It was customary to eat the resultant mass cold and without salt. I have encountered no record of the similar use of the eastern Buckeye. The Cali- fornians’ treatment of the Pacific Coast species is an interesting instance, I think, of what may be
done with the most unpromising material. 82
CHAPTER V
SOME LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS AND BERRIES
Greate store of forrest frute which hee Had for his food late gathered from the tree. The Faerie Queene.
O one has to be told of the edibility of our wild strawberries, huckleberries, currants, cranber- ries, mulberries, raspberries, blackberries, elderber- ries, grapes and persimmons; nor of the pleasure which some palates find in the bitterish tang that goes with the familiar wild plums and cherries, al- though the only use to which most housewives con- sider these last fitted is the manufacture of jams and jellies. It is more to the purpose, therefore, in this chapter to touch upon some less known fruits of the hedge and heath—using the word fruit in its limited popular sense as based on succulency, rather than with botanical accuracy. Throughout the basin of the upper Missouri and from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, the Buffalo- 83
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
berry (Shepherdia argentea, Nutt.) is at home. In the journals of travelers in the upper plains two or three generations ago, no bush is more often men-
BUFFALO-BERBY (Shepherdia argentea)
tioned than this. By the French voyageurs and en-
gagés it was called gratsse de boeuf, that is, ‘‘beef
fat,’’ which seems in harmony with the story I have
read that the name Buffalo-berry is derived from the 84
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
fact that it was a customary garnish to the monot- onous buffalo steaks and tongue of those early days. The plant is a somewhat spiny shrub or small tree with silvery, scurfy leaves, and forms at times ex- tensive and all but impenetrable thickets. The species is dicecious, and only the pistillate plant bears fruit; but that does it abundantly—tight clusters of small, scarlet berries, so sour as to find few takers until the frosts of October temper their acerbity. Then they are pleasant enough whether raw or cooked, though still with a touch of acid astringency that makes for sprightliness. Jelly made from them ranks especially high, and to this end they are gathered by white dwellers in the re- gions where they grow. In fact, the plant is not in- frequently found transferred to gardens. The ber- ries used to be one of the Indians’ dietary staples, lending a lively, fruity flavor to the unending stews and mushes of the red men. There is a related plant, the Silverberry (Elaeagnus argentea, Pursh), native to much the same region and often cultivated in gardens for the sake of the fragrant, silvery, funnel-form flowers and attractive foliage. Its white, scurfy berries, while in a sense edible, are too dry and mealy for most people, and are left to the prairie chickens. 85
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
The Nightshade family, to which we owe the tomato, the potato and the egg-plant (as well as the tobacco and some very poisonous fruits), is rep- resented in our wild flora by a number of plants bearing edible fruit. Of these the red berries of two shrubs of the deserts and semi-deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah resemble tiny ' tomatoes and go among the Spanish-speaking popu- lation under the name of tomatillo, that is, ‘‘little tomato.’’ They may be eaten raw, if perfectly ripe, or boiled and consumed either as a separate dish or used to enliven stews and soups. Dried, they look like currants and may be stored away for winter use. Botanically the plants are Lycium pallidum, Miers, and L. Andersonu, Gray. They are more or less spiny shrubs, with small, pale, narrowish leaves, bunched in the axils of the branchlets, and bearing funnel-form greenish or whitish flowers—those of L. pallidum nearly an inch long; of L. Andersoni much smaller. To the Navajo Indians, the berries of the former have a sacred significance and Doctor Matthews states that in his day they were used in sacrificial offerings to a Navajo demi-god. Similarly among the Zuiis the plant is sacred to one of their priestly fraternities, and treated with reverence as an intercessor with the gods of the harvest. When
86
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
the berries appear, certain individual plants are sprinkled with sacred meal and this business-like prayer proffered: ‘‘My father, I give you prayer meal; I want many peaches.’’ 1
To the same family belongs the genus Physalis,. some, perhaps most, species of which yield fruits that may be eaten. They are distinguished by a bladdery calyx which loosely envelops the small, tomato-like berry. These plants are known to Americans as Ground Cherries, and to the Spanish- speaking residents of our Southwest as tomates del campo, that is, ‘‘wild tomatoes.’’ Of the score or so of species indigenous to the United States, Physalis Viscosa, Pursh, is one of the best known—a hairy, sticky perennial, common in fields east of the Mis- sissippi from Ontario to the Gulf. The nodding, greenish-yellow flowers have a purplish-brown cen- ter; and the yellow fruit is reported on excellent au- thority to be the best. A species producing red fruit (P. longifolia, Nutt.), found wild from Nebraska to Texas and westward to Arizona, has been thought worthy of cultivation by the Zuii Indians, who used to grow it, and perhaps still do, in the women’s quaint little gardens on the slope of the river Zuii—
1 Stevenson. “Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians.” 30th Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethnology.
87
Tomato DEL CaMPo (Physalis longifolia)
88
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
gardens familiar to every observant visitor at this famous old pueblo. A favorite method of using the berries, according to Stevenson,? was to boil them and crush them in a mortar with raw onions, chili and coriander seeds. Among the whites, the Ground Cherries, when used at all, are made into pre- serves.
In the Rose sisterhood—a family that has given us a wealth of garden fruits—are a number of wild- ings of more or less food value. Next to the wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, none per- haps stands higher in popular favor than the Amelanchier, in popular parlance Service-berry, June-berry, Shad-bush or Sugar-pear.* It is found with specific variations in leaf and fruit on both our seaboards, as well as in the Middle West, a small tree or shrub with rather roundish, serrated leaves, and producing in late spring or early summer loose clusters of round or sometimes pea-shaped, crimson or dark-purple berries. These are juicy, with a pleasant taste not unlike huckleberries. To white settlers throughout the continent this berry has
2“Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians.”
3 Service-berry, a name transferred from an English species of Pyrus, whose fruit was known as serb, serve or service; June-
berry, because the fruit generally ripens in June; Shad-bush, be- cause blooming when the shad are running in Kastern ‘rivers,
89
i} Q re e PP oH oY omar, i (BY RO eR EWI A
LQ FASS Nae
CCG bat oO \ Ny Ratryh
ws WS
KJ
os SS i SS:
SERVICE-BERRY oe (Amelanchier Canadensis)
90
°
te of its desolate look, bears plants yielding food, soap
, in spi
A Southwestern desert hillside, which
. textile fiber and drinking water. The man in the foreground is cutting mescal.
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
always been an abundant wild stand-by for fruit pies. Old time Indians used it not only fresh but dried for winter consumption. Lewis and Clarke’s journal mentions a berry that is undoubtedly this, which the Indians were observed preserving by pounding masses together into ‘‘loaves’’ of ten to fifteen pounds weight. These would keep sweet throughout the season and would be used as needed by breaking off pieces to be soaked in water and dropped into stews. Strong competitors with man for the berries are the birds and the bears. Another western berry that has appealed strongly to Indian tastes but not, so far as I know, to ours, is the fruit of a species of Buckthorn (Rhamnus crocea, Nutt.). Doubtless there is nutrition in the berries, but they possess, according to Dr. Edward Palmer, the peculiar faculty of temporarily tinge- ing red the body of one who consumes them in quantity. He tells a gruesome story of accompany- ing as surgeon a troop of United States soldiers in pursuit of a band of twenty-two Apache Indians in Arizona, who were eventually surprised in their camp and killed outright. The bodies of all were discovered to be beautifully reticulated in red from the juice of the Rhamnus berries on which the Indians had. been gorging, the color having been 91
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
taken up by the blood and diffused through the smallest veins.
Our American Hawthorns (botanically, Crataegus, a genus which some modern botanists have split up into a hopeless multitude of confused species) bear clusters of tiny, alluring apples in various colors— yellow, purple, scarlet, dull red, some almost black. Many of these are admirable for jelly making. Among the best are the large haws of Crataegus mollis (T. & G.) Scheele, about an inch in diameter and of a bright scarlet color. The species is fairly common throughout the eastern United States and Central West. The Summer Haw (Crataegus flava, Ait.), a small tree of the Southern States, bears somewhat pear-shaped, yellowish fruits, one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter, which are also esteemed for jellies, as are the shining blackish ber- ries of the Black Haw (Crataegus Douglasii, Lindl.), common in the Pacific Northwest, and sweet and juicy enough to be pleasant eating uncooked. In fact, when it comes to providing raw material for the jelly makers, almost any thicket in late summer will yield something, for even the hips of the Wild Rose have been turned advantageously to that use. The hips of certain species, that is; those being pre- ferred whose content is juiciest and fleshiest—as, for
92
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
instance, the plump berries of the beautiful Nutka Rose of the Far Northwest. Frost is an essential
fees
\ nf rin pile
AMERICAN HAWTHORN (Crataegus mollis)
agent in arousing palatability in most sorts of rose
fruits. 93
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
On the Pacific Slope one of the cherished berries for jelly making is the Manzanita (Arctostaphylos of several species), a remarkable evergreen shrub, or sometimes a small tree, whose shiny, chocolate- colored trunk and twisting branches, as hard as bone, are familiar to every traveler in the California mountains. The popular name is Spanish for ‘‘little apple,’’ and aptly describes the appearance of the fruit. This is borne very abundantly and is ripe in mid-summer. The mountain folk, describing the plant, will tell you there are two kinds, one with smooth berries and the other with sticky ones: but botanists are not so easily satisfied, and have described at least a dozen species. The one most often used for jelly is Arctostaphylos Manzanita, Parry, common in mountainous regions throughout the length of California, and also, I believe, in parts of Arizona and Utah. The berries are smooth skinned, with an agreeable acid flavor, and nutritious, but dry, mealy and seedy. Chewed as one travels, they are a capital thirst preventive, but the pulp should be very sparingly swallowed, as it is quite hard to digest. Indians, in former days, however, set great store by them as an article of diet, and in specific Manzanita tracts, just as in the oak-groves, there were recognized tribal or family
94
MANZANITA | (Arctostaphylos Manzanita)
95
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
rights. The berries were consumed either dried and ground into pinole, or cooked as a mush, or in the fresh state. Death from intestinal stoppage is said to have sometimes resulted, however, from too free indulgence in the uncooked fruit. A favorite aboriginal use, too, was in the manufacture of cider, which will be described in the chapter on Beverage Plants.
To white cooks the Manzanita is of negligible in- terest except, as already hinted, as a basis for a jelly, which is famously good. The following recipe I have from Mr. Edmund C. Jaeger of Riviera, California: Select berries, by preference of the smooth-skinned variety, which are more juicy than the others, picking them when full grown but still green, say about the first of June. Put them in a boiler with cold water to cover; and after bringing them to a boil, let them simmer until thoroughly cooked through: then pour into a cheese-cloth sack and press out the juice. This will have a cloudy look. Add sugar in the proportion of pound for pound, and boil till the liquid jells. The sugar clari- fies the juice, and the jelly is a beautiful, clear, amber red. Should the berries be too ripe, there will be
4Chesnut. “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., Cali-
fornia.”
96
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS a failure to jell, but an excellent table syrup is the re-
sult, instead.
Wild currants, gooseberries, plums and cherries all play into the jelly maker’s hands; and so do the acid, scarlet berries of the eastern Barberry (Ber- beris Canadensis, Pursh), found in mountain woods
Orrcon GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium)
from Virginia to Georgia, as well as of the European
Barberry (B. vulgaris, L.) which has become a wild
plant in some sections. On the Pacific slope another
Barberry is the familiar Oregon Grape (Berberis
aquifolium, Pursh), a shrub two to six feet high,
with evergreen pinnate leaves of seven to nine 97
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
leathery, holly-like leaflets, abundant in rich woods among rocks, especially in northern California and Oregon, of which latter State it is the floral emblem. Erect clusters of small but conspicuous yellow
OREGON GRAPE (Berberis aquifolium)
flowers adorn the bushes in the spring, succeeded in
autumn by blue berries of a pleasant flavor which
are useful for jelly making and also as the basis of a
refreshing drink. Cousin to the Barberry is the 98
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
familiar May Apple, Wild Lemon or American Man- drake (Podophyllum peltatum, L.), a common herb, with umbrella-like leaves sheeting the ground in rich
1 OT
May APPLE (Podophyllum peltatum)
woodlands and shady meadows throughout the region
east of the Mississippi from Canada to the Gulf.
The pear-shaped fruit, about the size of a butternut,
has claims to edibility. When green it exhales a 99
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
rank, rather repulsive odor, but when fully matured, all that is changed into an agreeable fragrance, hard to define—a sort of composite of cantaloupe, summer apples and fox grapes. Brought indoors, two or three will soon perfume a whole room. As to palatability, tastes differ: some people loathe the flavor; others are fond of it. It ought not to be con- demned on the evidence of unripe specimens, but should be tested fully mature, at which stage the little ‘‘apples’’ are yellowish in color and drop into the hand at a touch. They may be eaten raw in moderation, the outer rind being first removed, or they may be converted into jelly. Care should be exercised with respect to the leaves and the root, which are drastic and poisonous.
Occurring throughout the same range with the May Apple, but much less common east of the Alleghenies, is a small tree affecting stream borders and producing in early spring odd, solitary, purplish flowers pendulous from the leaf axils at the same time with the opening leaves. It is the North American Papaw (Asimina triloba, Dunal). In Sep- tember or October it bears sparse bunches of oblong, greenish, pulpy fruits each four or five inches in length and an inch or two in diameter, known as papaws, wild bananas, or, by old time French set-
100
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
tlers, asimines—a Gallicized form of the Assiniboine Indian name of the fruits. They are unquestionably of some food value, though again tastes differ on the point of their palatability. ‘‘Edible for boys”’ is the classing they get from one good authority; but, on the other hand, the sweet, aromatic flavor is distinctly pleasant to some maturer palates. Perhaps, as I have heard it suggested, the divergence in views may be due in some degree to the fact of different natural varieties within the species. Our Papaw is a far- strayed member of the tropical family that includes the Anonas—the cherimoya, the sour-sop and the custard apples. Another plant tribe of the tropics that finds a small representation in the United States is the Passion Flower family, noted for its remarkable blossoms in which the devout have thought to see a perfect symbol of the Divine Pas- sion. There is one species, commonly called Maypop (Passiflora incarnata, L.), so frequent along fence rows and in cultivated fields of the Southern States as to be in the class of a weed. The fruit is a yel- low, egg-shaped berry, a couple of inches long, ac- counted edible, but more esteemed when made into jelly than when eaten raw. Nevertheless to some tastes the flavor is agreeable. I fancy it is to this plant that John Muir refers in his ‘‘Thousand Mile 101
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Walk to the Gulf,’’ quoting for it a local Georgia name, ‘‘ Apricot vine,’’ having a superb flower ‘‘and the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten.’’
The Heath family, which gives us the huckleberry, blueberry and cranberry (too well known to be treated here), as well as the manzanita already de- scribed, has two or three other members growing wild and bearing berries whose edibility is touched with a special grace of spiciness. One of these is the familiar Teaberry, Checkerberry or Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens, L.), an aromatic, creeping, evergreen vine usually of coniferous woods, from subarctic America southward through the eastern United States to Georgia. The crimson-coated ber- ries, about the size of peas, are pleasant morsels and make a welcome feature in a small way in the autumnal displays of fruit venders in Hastern cities. A Pacific Coast species of Gaultheria with black- purple berries (G. Shallon, Pursh) has become com- monly known by the name of Salal, a corrupted form of its Indian designation. It is a small shrub, one to three feet high, with sticky, hairy stems, frequent in the redwood forests of Northern California, and thence northward in shady woods as far as British Columbia. Lewis and Clarke’s journal contains several references to the Oregon Indians’ fondness
102
SaLaL
(Gaultheria Shallon)
103
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
for the berries, which, under the names of Shallon and Shewel, seem to have been a staple of diet with them. Though thick of skin they are well flavored.
Paradoxical enough, it is the desert that grows some of our most important and most juicy wild fruits. Among these the plump pods of species of Yucca or Spanish Dagger, abundant throughout the arid regions of the Southwest, are of recognized worth. One of the most widely distributed is Yucca baccata, Torr., called by the Mexican population Palmilla ancha or Détil—the former name mean- ing ‘‘broad-leaved little date-palm,’’ and the latter, ‘‘the date fruit.’’ The fruit is succulent, plump, and in shape like a short banana, and is borne in large, upright clusters, seedy but nutritious. The taste is agreeably sweet when fully developed, which is in the autumn if birds and bugs spare the pods so long. Indians have always regarded the Datil asaluxury. As I write there comes visibly to mind a chilly, mid-August morning in the Arizona plateau country, when two Navajo shepherdesses left their straggling flock to share in the warmth of our camp fire and pass the time of day. As they squatted by the flame, I noticed that one slipped some objects from her blanket into the hot ashes, but with such deft
104
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
secretiveness that my eyes failed to detect what they were. Later as the woman rose to go, she raked away the ashes with a stick and drew out several blackened Yucca pods, which had been roasting while we talked. I can testify to the entire palatability of this cooked fruit (the rind being first removed), finding it pleasantly suggestive of sweet potato. Those fruits that morning were still green when plucked. Dr. H. H. Rusby informs me that the sliced pulp of the nearly ripe pods makes a pie almost in- distinguishable from apple pie. The ripe fruit may be eaten raw, but the more usual custom among the Pueblo Indians, who would travel long miles in the pre-education days to gather the succulent, yellow pods and bring them home by the burro-load, was to cook them. Sometimes they were simply boiled, and on cooking the skin was removed, since it then sep- arates easily from the pulp; but there was a more complicated process, resulting in a sort of conserve, that was considered better. This was to bake the fruit, peel it and remove the fibre, and then boil down the pulp to a firm paste. This was rolled out in sheets of about an inch in thickness, and carefully dried. Afterwards these were cut up into con- venient sizes and laid away to be consumed either 105
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
as a sweetmeat, or dissolved in water as a beverage, or employed like molasses on tortillas and bread.® The young flower buds of this and some other species of Yucca possess a considerable content of sugar and other nutritive principles, and by the aborigines are considered delicacies when cooked. Coville records a custom of the Panamint Indians who collected the swelling buds of the grotesque arborescent Yucca of the Mojave Desert known as the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia, Engelm.) and roasted them over hot coals, eating them afterwards either hot or cold.
The Yuccas have been useful to the desert people in other ways than as food, and we shall hear of them again in subsequent chapters. It is not re- markable, therefore, that the plant is imbued with sacred significance and enters in many ways into na- tive religious ceremonies. Among the Navajos, Yucca baccata is called hoskawn and allusions to it are of frequent occurrence in the folk lore of that interesting race. Its leaves are the material out of which the ceremonial masks employed in the relig- ious rites of these people are made. The Govern- ment has given particular distinction to this plant
5 Bandelier, quoted by Harrington in “Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians,” Bull. 55, Bur. Amer. Ethnology.
106
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
by bestowing its Spanish name on the ‘‘Datil Na- tional Forest’’ of New Mexico.
The Cactus family, those especial plant children of the desert, yield some quite choice fruits, though they make us work to get them, hedged about as they are with vicious spines and bristles. Of several genera indigenous to the United States producing edible berries, the most widely distributed is Opuntia, embracing two quite different looking divi- sions, one with broad, flattened joints (the Platopun- tias) and one with cylindric, cane-like joints (the Cylindropuntias). The former division includes the well-known Prickly Pears or Indian Figs, of which two species (Opuntia vulgaris, Mill. and O. Rafi- mesquii, Engelm.) occur in sandy or sterile soil of the Atlantic seaboard. Their seedy, lean, insipid berries, each an inch or so long, are edible in a way, but they are not at all in the same class with the fat, juicy ‘‘pears’’ of many of the species growing wild in the Southwestern desert country, where the genus is best represented. Even there, there is great choice in the fruits of different species, those of the broad-jointed sort being much the best. Such plants are called nopal by the Spanish-speaking Southwesterners and the fruit tuna. Among these Opuntia laevis, Coult., and the varieties of O. Engel-
107
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
manni and O. Lindheimeri (the last abundant in Southern California) are especially valued. Better than these, however, are certain species introduced a century or more ago by the Franciscan Mis- sionaries from Mexico, the motherland of the cacti. These are Opuntia Tuma, Mill., and O. Ficus-Indica, Mill., and they now grow wild in many parts of Cal- ifornia, especially about the old Mission towns, the fruit being annually harvested by the Mexican pop- ulation. (See illustration facing page 18.)
The gatherer of tunas is faced by two difficulties —the rigid, needle-like spines that bristle on all sides of the plant, and the small tufts of tiny spicules that stud the fruit itself. The latter are really the more dangerous, because a touch transfers them from the tuna to the picker’s flesh, there to stick and prick wickedly. If they happen to get into the mouth or upon the tongue, the pain is persistent and agonizing. With care, however, nothing of that sort need happen. Armed with a fork and a sharp knife, you spear your tuna firmly with the fork, give it a wrench and complete the parting from the stem by a slash of the knife. The next step is to peel the ‘‘pear,’’ which is made up of a pulpy, seedy heart enveloped in an inedible rind. This may be readily got rid of in the following way: Handling the tuna with a
108
Gathering tunas, fruit of the nopal cactus, California.
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
Slove or speared upon a fork, lay it upon a clean board, and holding it down slice off each end; then make a longitudinal cut through the rind from end to end; lay open both flaps of the rind, which may then be pressed back, separating along natural lines from the pulp. If the gathered fruit is first placed in water and stirred well, the spicules are to a con- siderable extent washed off. (See illustration, page 174.)
Eaten raw, tunas of the better sort are refresh- ing and agreeable to most people, though the bony seeds are an annoyance unless one swallows them whole, after the Mexican fashion. The taste differs somewhat with the species, those that I have eaten possessing a flavor suggesting watermelon. The sugar content is considerable, and a very good syrup may be obtained by boiling the peeled fruits until soft enough to strain out the seeds; after which the juice may be boiled down further. No sugar need be added, unless a very sweet syrup is needed. Care should be exercised to select fruit that is really ripe; in some sorts maturity is slow to follow coloration. After all, though, it is Mexico where tuna raising and consumption have become an art, and the tuna market is an interesting feature in many Mexican towns. During the time of the harvest whole
109
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
families go to the hills and camp out in the Nopaleros (the areas where the cactus grows) and live prac- tically upon tunas alone. Mr. David Griffiths, in his monograph ‘‘The Tuna as a Food for Man,’’® states that at such times about two hundred tunas a day constitute the ration of one individual. Large quantities are dried for future use and several pro- ducts are also manufactured from the fresh fruit. One of these, called queso de tuna (that is, ‘‘tuna cheese’’), is an article of sale in the Mexican quarters of our Southwestern towns. It is made by reducing the seeded tuna pulps to an evaporated paste, and is sent to market in the shape of small cheeses, dark red or almost black.
Another member of the Cactus family that is an important food source in the Southwest is the Sahuaro (Cereus giganteus, Engelm.). It is Arizona’s floral emblem, and abounds throughout the southwestern part of that State and across the frontier into northern Mexico, forming at times in the desert strange, thin forests casting attenuated shafts of shade. It is one of the world’s botanical marvels, a leafless tree with fluted, columnar trunk and scanty, vertical branches, rising sometimes to
6 Bull. 116 Bur. Plant Industry, U. S. Dept. Agriculture. 110
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
the height of sixty feet and tipped in spring with numerous creamy, pink flowers. The fruit com- monly goes by its Mexican name, pitahaya. It ripens in June and July, and somewhat resembles the tuna in form, with a juicy, seedy, crimson pulp. To civilized tastes, the fresh fruit is rather mawkish, less sweet than that of the related pitahaya dulce, which is common on the Mexican side of the border and is borne by Cereus Thurberi, Engelm. Never- theless the Arizona pitahaya is of considerable food value and highly relished by the Indians of the region, particularly the older generation of Papagos, who make a festival of the opening of the pitahaya harvest, dating their new year from that event, and used to intoxicate themselves as a religious duty upon a sort of wine that they made for the occasion from the fermented first fruits.
The pitahayas are gathered with a twenty-foot pole, made of the rod-like ribs of some dead sahuaro lashed together and having a hook affixed to the tip, with which the fruit is dislodged. Such part of the crop as is not consumed raw is boiled down, as in the case of the tuna, the seeds removed, and then boiled again until the mass is reduced to a syrup. This is of a clear, light brown color, and pleasantly sweet,
111
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
making a fair substitute for molasses and corre- spondingly good on bread or corn cakes. It is set away for winter consumption.? The inner part of the pitahaya may also be sun-dried, and will then keep for a long time. Sahuaro seeds are quite oily, and I am told by Mr. HE. H. Davis that the Papagos dry them and grind them into an oleaginous paste, which they spread like butter on their tortillas. The ribs of this most useful plant are also employed by these same Indians as the basis of their stick-and- mud houses—a practice doubtless inherited from the ancients, as in many old cliff dwellings sahuaro ribs are found reinforcing adobe.
A word about one more desert fruit, Baal this chapter closes. On the Colorado Desert of South- eastern California, there is indigenous a stately palm known as the California Fan Palm (Washingtonia filifera, Wendl., var. robusta), which has been widely introduced into cultivation in the Southwest. In the cafions of the San Jacinto Mountains opening to the desert and in the desert foothills of the San Bernar- dino Mountains, as well as here and there in certain alkaline oases of thedesert itself, extensive groves of this noble palm flourish—the remnant, it is
7 For an interesting and detailed account of the Arizona Sahuaro harvest and ‘uses, see Mr. Carl Lumholtz’s “New Trails in Mexico.”
112
*royinq pue dnifs ‘s[elio}ew SuIpjing pue ‘QUIM IO} Posn St jey} JNIZ e a]t}xe} ‘pooy soaystuing yoy suronpoid—oienyes—snapuvsis $nada9 “(emojuysem) weg ueq ems0js ed
LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS
believed, of far greater forests that probably existed in that region in primeval times. The mature fruit of the Washingtonia is berry-like and black, resem- bling a small grape or cherry, and is borne in huge compound clusters, which hang below the leafy crown of the tree in autumn and early winter. The relatively large seed is embedded in a thin pulp of sweetish flavor, which is edible, though it requires industry and a long pole to reach the fruit. These requisites were possessed by the old-time desert Indians, who used to make of the palm-berries an important feature in their diet, not only consuming the pulp both fresh and dried, but also grinding the seeds into a meal, which Dr. Edward Palmer thought as good as cocoanut.
113
CHAPTER VI
WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, or eat as salads with my bread.
Gulliver’s Travels,
HAT would you say to a dish of ferns on toast? It is quite feasible in the spring, if
the Common Bracken (Pteris aquilina, L.) grows in your neighborhood—that coarse, weedy-look- ing fern with long, cord-like creeping root-stocks and great, triangular fronds topping stalks one to two feet high or more, frequent in dry, open woods and in old fields throughout the United States—the most abundant of ferns. The part to be used for this purpose is the upper portion of the young shoot, cut at the period when the fern shoot has recently put up and is beginning to uncurl. The lower part of the shoot, which is woody, and the leafy tip, which is unpleasantly hairy, are rejected. It is the inter- mediate portion that is chosen, and though this is
114
Fe
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
loosely invested with hairs, these are easily brushed off. Then the cutting, which resembles an at- tenuated asparagus stalk, is ready for the pot. Divided into short lengths and cooked in salted, boil-
ing water until quite tender—a process that usually requires a half to three quarters of an hour—the fern may be served like asparagus, as a straight vegeta- ble, or on toast with drawn butter, or as a salad with French dressing. The cooked fern has a taste quite its own, with a sugges-
tion of almond. Its SRE ee ss
food value, according to some experiments
‘
BrackEN SHOOTS (Pteris aquilina)
made a few years ago by the Washington State Uni- versity, is reckoned as about that of cabbage, and rather more than either asparagus or tomatoes. Furthermore, the rootstocks of this fern are edible, according to Indian standards, and are doubtless of some nutritive worth as they are starchy, but the
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
flavor does not readily commend itself to cultivated palates.
Dietitians who insist on the value of salads as part of a rightly balanced ration have a strong backer in Mother Nature, if we may take as a hint the large number of wild plants which everywhere freely offer themselves to us as ‘‘greens’’—all wholesomely edible and many of decided palatability. Especially in the spring, when the human system is starving for green things and succulent, the earth teems with these tender wilding shoots that our ancestors set more or less store by, but which in these days of cheap and abundant garden lettuce and spinach we leave to the rabbits. To know such plants in the first stages of their growth, when neither flower nor fruitage is present to assist in identification—the stage at which most of them must be picked to serve as salads or pot herbs—presupposes an all-round acquaintance with them, so that the collector must needs be a bit of an expert in his line, or have a friend who is. S
There is one, however, that is familiar to ‘every- body—the ubiquitous Dandelion, whose young plants are utilized as pot-herbs particularly by immigrants from over sea as yet too little Americanized to have lost their thrifty Old World ways. It is a pleasant
116
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
sight of spring days to see these new-fledged Ameri- cans dotting the fields and waste lots near our big cities, armed with knives, snipping and transferring to sack or basket the tender new leaves of the well- beloved plant, which, like themselves, is a translated European. The leaves are best when boiled in two waters to remove the bitterness resident in them; and then, served like spinach or beet-tops, they are good enough for any table. Old Peter Kalm, who has ever an eye watchful for the uses to which people put the wild plants, tells us the French Canadians in his day did not use the leaves of the Dandelion, but the roots, digging these in the spring, cutting them and preparing them as a bitter salad.
Then there is Chicory, which has run wild in settled parts of the eastern United States and to some extent on the Pacific coast, adorning the road- sides in summer with its charming blue flowers of half a day. Its young leaves, if prepared in the same way as those of the Dandelion, are relished by some. Preferably, though, the leaves are blanched and eaten raw as a salad. The blanching may be done in several ways. The outer leaves may be drawn up and tied so as to protect the inner foliage from the light and thus whiten it, or flower-pots may be capped over the plants. Another method is this:
117
~
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
CHICORY (Cichorium Intybus)
Dig up the roots in the autumn, cut back the tops
to within an inch of the root-crown and bury the
roots to within an inch of the top in a bed of loose
mellow earth in a warm cellar. In a month or two, 118
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
new leaves should appear, crisp and white and ready for the salad bowl. | Another old-fashioned pot-herb that may be gathered freely in the spring is the early growth of that familiar weed of gardens and waste places throughout the land, the homely Pigweed (Cheno- podium album, L.), or Lamb’s quarters. This latter queer name, by the way, like the plant itself, is a waif from England, and according to Prior! is a corruption of ‘‘Lammas quarter,’’ an ancient festival in the English calendar with which a kindred plant (Atriplex patula), of identical popular name and usage, had some association. Of equal or per- haps greater vogue are the young spring shoots of the Pokeweed. (Phytolacca decandra, L.) boiled in two waters (and in the second with a bit of fat pork) and served with a dash of vinegar. So, too, the first, tender sprouts of the common eastern Milk- weed (Asclepias Syriaca, L.) have garnished country tables in the spring as a cooked vegetable, but the older stems are too acrid and milky for use. Mr. J. M. Bates, writing in ‘‘The American Botanist,’’ speaks of this and of the closely related species, A. speciosa, Torr., of the region west of the Mississippi, as the best of all wild greens, provided they are
1“On the Popular Names of British Plants,” R. C. A. Prior, M. D. 119
MILKWEED
a)
8yr
(Asclepias
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
picked while young enough, that is, like asparagus sprouts and while the stems will still snap when bent. Young leaves and all are good in that stage of growth.
The Buckwheat family, which has yielded to civili- zation not only the grain that bears the family name but also the succulent vegetable Rhubarb, has some wild members with modest pretensions to useful- ness. That common weed, naturalized from Europe, the Curled Dock (Rumez crispus, L.), for instance, is of this tribe; and its spring suit of radical leaves stands well with bucolic connoisseurs in greens. An- other Rumex (R. hymenosepalus, Torr.), common on the dry plains and deserts of the Southwest and be- coming very showy when its ample panicles of dull crimson flowers and seed-vessels are set, is famous there as a satisfactory substitute for rhubarb, which, indeed, the plant somewhat resembles. The large leaves, nearly a foot long, are narrowed to a thick, fleshy footstalk, which is crisp, juicy and _ tart. These stalks, stripped off before the toughness of age has come upon them, and cooked like rhubarb, are hardly distinguishable from it. Westerners know it as Wild Rhubarb, Wild Pie Plant, and Cafiaigre. Under the last name it has some celebrity as tanning material, the tuberous roots being rich
121
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rh
Nas LESS
oe 5» ek SD _, yo ae 2 i> ye ae (
<a ‘ OIE AR S UES SS!
Wr Ruvpars (Rumex hymenosepalus) 122
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
in tannin and having been long used by the Indians in treating skins. The tannin is extracted by leach- ing the dried and ground roots.
To the same family belongs the vast western genus Eriogonum, which includes that famous honey plant of the Pacific coast known as Wild Buckwheat. Some members of this genus are prized by the Indians and children for the refreshing acidity of the young stems—a quality of distinct value in the arid regions where many of them grow and where one is ‘‘a long way from a lemon.’’ Among such is Eriogonum inflatum, T. & F., the so-called ‘‘Desert Trumpet’’ or ‘‘Pickles,’’ found abundantly on the southwestern desert as far north as Utah and eastward to New Mexico. It is remarkable for its bluish-green, leafless stalks, hollow and puffed out like a trumpet, sometimes to the diameter of an inch or.so, and rising out of a radical cluster of small heart-shaped leaves. The stems before flowering are tender and are eaten raw.
The peppery, anti-scorbutic juices of the Mustard family supply a valuable element in the human dietary everywhere; and besides the important vege- tables and condiments that represent it in our gardens—such as cabbage, turnips, radishes, horse- radish, ete.—there are several species growing wild
123
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
that have been proved of worth. Water-cress, known to everybody (Nasturtium officinale, R. Br.) and originally introduced, at least in the East, from Europe, is now a common aquatic throughout a large part of the United States and Canada. The waters of springs and brooks are often found thickly blanketed with green coverlets of this plant dotted with the tiny white flowers, and lending spice to the wayfarer’s luncheon. Winter Cress, Yellow Rocket, or Barbara’s Cress (Barbarea vulgaris, R. Br.) used to be very generally eaten by people of humble gastronomic aspirations, so that it has acquired the additional name of Poor Man’s Cabbage, being pre- pared either as a pot-herb or as a salad. It is abundant by roadsides and in low-lying frelds quite across the continent, and, in fact, almost around the world, and was no doubt cultivated in our colonial gardens. Even in winter, when the snow melts enough to show bare patches of earth, the tufted, thickish leaves of this sturdy mustard are frequently revealed, green and alive, hugging the ground. The lower leaves are of the shape that botanists call lyrate—that is, long and deeply lobed, with one to four pairs of segments and a terminal one large and roundish. In early spring it sends up a spike of showy, yellow, four-petaled flowers. Quite similar 124
WINTER CRESS (Barbarea vulgaris)
125
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
to this, and by some botanists considered only a variety of it, is the Scurvy Grass (Barbarea praecoa, R. Br.), with leaf divisions more numerous than those of the Winter Cress. It, also, is used as a winter salad. It must have been very grateful to systems suffering from the unvaried ration of salt meat that too often distinguished the winter tables of our rural ancestors.
In the same class are two large cruciferous plants of the arid regions of the Far West, that go by the name of Wild Cabbage among the whites who know them. Their tender stems and leaves have a cab- bage-like taste and have at times gone into the pioneer’s cooking pots. One is Stanleya pinnatifida, Nutt., found in dry, even desert soil, from South Dakota to New Mexico and westward to California, a stout, smooth perennial, two to four feet tall, with lower leaves divided into slender segments and with long racemes of yellow, four-petaled flowers, suc- ceeded by slender seed-vessels downwardly curved on long foot-stalks. The other is Caulanthus crassi- caults (Torr.), Wats., found on dry foothills of the interior basin from the Sierra Nevada to Utah. It, too, is a stout, smooth perennial, two to three feet high, but with hollow, inflated stems, leaves mostly radical and in shape somewhat like a dandelion’s,
126
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
and dark-purple flowers each with four crisped, wavy petals little larger than the woolly calyx. The young plants, while still tender, are edible but need to be cooked. The process pursued by the Panamint Indians is thus described by Coville: ‘‘The leaves and young stems are gathered and thrown into boil- ing water for a few minutes, then taken out, washed in cold water, and squeezed. The operation of washing is repeated five or six times, and the leaves are finally dried, ready to be used as boiled cabbage. Washing removes the bitter taste and certain sub- stances that would be likely to produce nausea or diarrhoea.’’
One would suppose that the stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica, L.) would be as unlikely a subject as one could readily find to supply a morsel where- with to tickle the palate. Nevertheless, this ‘‘nat- uralized nuisance,’’ as good old Doctor Darling- ton of ‘‘Flora Cestrica’’ fame testily styles it, has long been valued as a vegetable in Europe, whence the plant has come to us. There the tender shoots, cut before the flowering stage, were served in old times on the tables of the well-to-do as well as of the peasantry. On a day in February, 1661, Mr. Samuel Pepys, of immortal memory, ingenuously set down in his diary the fact that calling upon one
127
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Mr. Simons in London, he found the gentleman abroad, ‘‘but she, like a good lady, within, and there we did eat some nettle porridge, which was made on purpose to-day for some of their coming, and was very good.’’ Was it not Goldsmith who wrote that a French cook of the olden time could make seven different dishes out of a nettle-top?
Along our Southwestern border from Texas to California and southward into Mexico a species of Amaranth grows (Amaranthus Palmeri, Wats.), known to the Mexicans and Indians as quelite (a general name among the Mexican population, I believe, for greens) or more specifically as bledo. The latter word is good Spanish for ‘‘blite,’’? an Old World pot-herb. Quelite is highly regarded when young and tender as a vegetable for men, and, when cut and stacked, as a winter feed for cattle. It isa stout, weedy annual, two to four feet high, the ovate leaves one to four inches long on footstalks about twice that length, the greenish flowers of two sexes (on different plants) disposed in long, dense chaffy spikes. Only the young plants should be gathered; they should then be boiled without delay, and the result, in the judgment of white people who know it, is a dish resembling asparagus in flavor, and rather superior to spinach. Mexicans and Indians have
128
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
used it extensively.2, Other species of Amaranths have been similarly turned to account.
This little course in wild pot-herbs may now be closed with mention of three members of the Portu- laca family. These plants are marked by smooth, succulent, thickish leaves, and though humble herbs, they are usually found, when found at all, in sufficient abundance to be very noticeable. Most familiar is the little prostrate plant common everywhere in fields and waste places, called Purslane (Portulaca oleracea, L.). It is generally regarded by Ameri- cans as a weed and provokes the temper by its stub- born persistence in turning up after it has appar- ently been eradicated. It has, however, held quite a respectable social position abroad, where garden- ers have cultivated it and developed it as a whole- some vegetable useful not only as a pot-herb but for salads and pickles. On the Pacific slope a cousin of the Purslane, known as Miner’s or Indian Lettuce (Montia perfoliata, Howell), is abundant in shady places. It is easily recognized by clustered, long- stalked, fleshy root-leaves, rhomboidal in outline, from among which a flower stalk rises to the height of several inches. This is terminated by a raceme of tiny white flowers beneath which a pair of. oppo-
2 Lumholtz, “New Trails in Mexico.”
129
Mrner’s Lerruce (Montia perfoliata)
130
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
site leaves united at their bases forms a cup or saucer around the stem, a diagnostic feature of the plant. The Indians were very fond of the pleasant succulence of the stem and leaves and their consump- tion of the herb led the white pioneers to try it. It makes, indeed, a palatable enough dish, either raw with a sprinkling of salad dressing or boiled and served like spinach. Stephen Powers tells of a certain tribe of California Indians who were accus- tomed to lay the leaves near the nests of red ants, which running over the greens would flavor them with a formic acidity that served in lieu of vinegar! * The value of this little wilding is attested by its intro- duction into English kitchen gardens, where, under the name of Winter Purslane, it is esteemed as a pot-herb and a salad plant.
Also of California is another of the Portulaca kin- ship, the pretty wild flower known as Red Maids or Kisses (Calandrinia caulescens Menzies, Gray), whose crimson blossoms expanding in the sunshine make sheets of vivid color over considerable areas in the spring. The plant is an annual with juicy stem and leaves, and may be used like those others of its family just mentioned as a garnish to a meal.
If, as we have seen, the Nettle may be made to
3 “Contributions to North American Ethnology,” vol. III, 425. 131
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
grace the table, it is quite credible that within the spiny armor of the Cactus tribe nutrition may be hiding. As a matter of fact, in the Southwest the Mexican and Indian population resort to the Nopal (that is, the flat-jointed sort of Opuntia) not only for the tuna fruit, as described in a previous chapter, but also for the succulent flesh of the stem, which may be made to do duty as a vegetable. The Mexi- cans call these flattened joints pencas, and gather the young ones when about half grown and before the spines have hardened. Cut into narrow strips, boiled until tender and served with a tasty dressing or just salt and pepper, they are about in the class of string beans, particularly grateful to desert dwell- ers whose craving for green food it is not always easy to satisfy. There is a bluish-green, procumbent cactus without spines (Opuntia basilaris, Engelm.) common in the southwestern deserts, that has been in particular favor with the Indians, and the Pana- mint method of preparing it, as recorded by Mr. Coville, may be stated here: In May or early June the fleshy joints of the season’s growth; as well as the buds, blossoms and immature fruit, are distended with sweet sap. The joints are then broken off and collected, carefully rubbed with grass to remove the
4The American Anthropologist, October, 1892. 182
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
tiny bristles, and spread in the sun to dry. After being thoroughly dried, they will keep indefinitely, and are boiled as required and eaten with a season- ing of salt. An alternative process is to steam the joints for about twelve hours in stone-lined pits first made hot by a fire of brush. The cactus, thus cooked, may be eaten at once or dried and laid away for future use. It then has the texture and appear- ance of unpeeled dried peaches.
From the curious, cylindrical, keg-like bodies of another cactus of the Southwest (Echinocactus sp.), termed bisnaga by the Mexicans, or Barrel Cactus by polite Americans (others sometimes style it Nigger-head), a sort of conserve used to be made by the Papago Indians of Arizona—the prototype of the so-called ‘‘Cactus Candy’’ of city shops. The process, as described by Dr. Edward Palmer, was to pare away the thorny rind of a large specimen and let it remain several days ‘‘to bleed.’? Then the pulp was cut up into pieces of suitable size and boiled in the syrup of the Sahuaro pitahayas, obtained as described in the preceding chapter. Another and more important use of this cactus will be described later.
Few plants of the Southwestern desert region are more interesting and useful than the Agave, a genus
133
USEFUL WILD PLANTS of the Amaryllis family. Its general aspects are made familiar through the well-known Century Plant of cultivation. There are a dozen species or more indigenous within the limits of the United States, ranging mostly along the Mexican border from Texas to California. For years—ten to twenty, it may be—the plant devotes itself exclu- sively to developing a rosette of slender, pulpy, dagger-pointed leaves, stiff and fibrous. Then some spring day, within the center of this savage leaf- cradle, a conical bud is born and develops quickly, a foot a day it may be, into a huge, asparagus-like stalk, twelve or fifteen feet tall, that breaks out at the summit into clusters of yellow blossoms. This long delayed consummation costs the plant its life, and with the maturing of its seeds it turns brown and withers away. It is from a Mexican species of Agave that the Mexicans manufacture their desolat- ing drinks pulque and mescal. The United States species, however, have been little turned to such account, but as a nutritive food source they have from very ancient times been important to the Indians. This food shares with the fiery Mexican drink the name mescal. Even at the present day, when the ease of extracting a meal from a tin can has been the cause of relegating many an honest 134
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
old-time cookery to oblivion, there are Indians who pack up every spring and repair to the mescal fields, there to open again the ancient baking pits which their fathers and their fathers before them had used, and camp for a week at a time, cutting and cooking, feasting and singing, and telling once more the im- memorial legends of their race.
The process of preparing mescal as I happen to have observed it in California is this: The succu- lent, budding flower-stalks when just emerging from amid the leaves are cut out with an axe, or better yet with a native implement fashioned for the purpose— a long, stout lever of hard wood (oak or mountain mahogany) beveled at one end like a chisel. They are then trimmed of their tips and all adhering leaf- age, the desirable portion being the butt, which is filled with all the pent-up energy that the plant was holding in reserve for the supreme act of flower and seed production. Meantime, a circular pit, about a foot and a half deep and five or six feet in diameter, has been prepared—usually one that has been used in previous years being dug out. This is lined side and bottom with flat stones, and a huge fire of dry brush started in it, care being taken to use no wood that is bitter. When the fire has burned down, the mescal butts are placed in the hot ashes, covered
185
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
over with more hot ashes and heated stones from the sides of the pit, and all is then buried beneath a mound of earth. There the mescal is left to steam until some time the next day, like the four-and- twenty blackbirds of the nursery rhyme in their pie. When the pit is opened the mescal, still hot and now charred on the outside, is drawn out, the burnt exterior pared off, and the brown, sticky inside laid bare, to be eaten on the spot or laid away to cool and be transported home for future use. If the buds have been cut young enough, mescal is tender and sweet, the flavor suggesting a cross between pine- apple and banana and pleasant to most white palates. Indians are extravagantly fond of it, and it is rare indeed that the stock carried home lasts over the following summer. Should the buds be too old when cooked, the result is unpleasantly fibrous, though in such cases one need only chew until the edible part is consumed, when the fibre may be spat out. Mr. Coville, in his account of the Panamints above quoted, speaks of finding at some forsaken Indian camps along the Colorado River, dried and weathered wads of chewed mescal fibre—visible re- minders of forgotten feasts.
Denizens of the same region with the Agaves, and
136
‘Surjeq Joy (y4asap savsp) yeosou Suryqyno ‘aerpuy UI9}]S9MYINOG
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
somewhat resembling them, are several species of Dasylirion, but the leaves, which form a crown upon a central stem, are much narrower and the small flowers are white and constructed on the plan of the lily. They are called, in popular parlance, Bear- grass, from Bruin’s fondness for the tender stalks, or more generally by their Mexican name, Sotol. The budding flower-stalks are to some extent used like mescal—roasted and eaten. So, too, the beauti- ful Yucca Whipple, Torr., abundant throughout Southern California and adjacent regions, has been made to add variety to the aboriginal menu. The splendid flower masses of this plant, several feet in length and rising in pure white spires out of a bristling clump of slender, rigid, spine-tipped leaves, are a famous sight in parts of the Southwest. Americans call this Yucca ‘‘Spanish Bayonet,’’ or sometimes more poetically ‘‘The Lord’s Candle.’’ To Mexicans it is quiote, one of the many Aztec terms that survive with little mutilation in the Spanish dialect of the Southwest. The flower-stalk, when full grown but before the buds expand, is filled with sap and is edible, cut into sections and either boiled or roasted in the ashes. The tough rind should first be peeled off. The flower buds, too, 137
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
make a palatable vegetable, if boiled, and serve as a succulent side-dish to the camper’s usually monotonous dry diet.
On the Southeastern rim of our country from North Carolina to Florida, a common tree is the Cab- bage Palmetto (Sabal Palmetto, R. & S.), which South Carolina has adopted as so peculiarly her own that she is known as the Palmetto State. It is a palm of much the general look of the California Fan Palm, though it never attains so great a height as the latter often does. All palms grow by the de- velopment of a central, terminal leaf-bud, and this in some species—the Palmetto is one—is turned to ac- count as an edible, being popularly known as a ‘‘cabbage.’’? When cooked, the Palmetto cabbage is a tender, succulent vegetable, though the harvest- ing of the buds is a wasteful practice, unless it is desired to clear the land, as cutting them out kills the trees.
We have it on the authority of Holy Writ that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, foregathered for a season with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen, finding it, it is to be assumed, a sustain- ing ration. The Indians of California, curiously enough, long ago acquired and maintained more per- sistently than the royal Babylonian a similar habit
138
EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES
of turning themselves out to pasture, to feast upon the patches of wild clover. This they ate raw and with greedy avidity, before the flowering stage, while the plants were still young and tender. In fact, clover was another of the aboriginal food plants esteemed as so important as to be honored with especial dance ceremonies. Chesnut speaks of see- ing groups of Indians in Mendocino County, Cali- fornia, wallowing in the wild clover, plucking the herbage and eating it by the handful. Its nutritive content is unquestioned, if only one have the diges- tive organs to handle it, chemical analysis of the leaves showing the presence of food elements in good degree. Intemperate indulgence, however, is liable to cause bloat and severe indigestion. The _Indians, to obviate this, learned that dipping the leaves in salted water, or munching with them the parched kernels of the Pepper-nut (the fruit of the California Laurel, Umbellularia Californica) is efficacious. Not all species of clover are considered equally good. The favorite, still to quote Chesnut, is the so-called ‘‘sweet clover’’ (Trifolium virescens, Greene), distinguished by stout, succulent stéms, ovate leaflets, large, inflated yellow and pink flowers,
5V. K. Chesnut, “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co.,
California,”
139
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
and a noticeable sweetness of taste. Of this species even the flowers are eaten. Next to this in favor is the ‘‘sour’’ or ‘‘salt clover’? (J. obtusiflorum, Hook.), with narrow, saw-toothed leaflets, whitish. blossoms with purple centers, and a' clammy, acid- ulous exudation that covers the leaves and flowers.
140
CHAPTER VII BEVERAGE PLANTS OF FIELD AND WOOD
And sip with nymphs their elemental tea. Pope.
AN dearly loves a sup of drink with his ‘meat,
and when our pioneer ancestors in the Ameri- can wilderness ran short of tea and coffee and craved a change from cold water, they found material for more or less acceptable substitutes in numerous wild plants. Particularly during the American Revolu- tion was interest awakened in these, and several popular plant-names still current date from those days of privation. Again during our Civil War the attention of residents in the South was similarly drawn to the wild offerings of nature. A literary curiosity, now rare, of those dark days may still be turned up in libraries, a book entitled ‘‘ Resources of Southern Fields and Forests . . . with practical information on the useful properties of the Trees, Plants and Shrubs,’’ by Francis Peyre Porcher, Charleston, S. C., 1863, the writer being then a surgeon in the Confederate Army.
141
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Among such beverage plants one of the best known is a little shrub, two or three feet high, frequent in dry woodlands and thickets of the eastern half of the continent from Canada to Texas and Florida, com- monly called New Jersey Tea, the Ceanothus Ameri- canus, L., of the botanists. It is characterized by pointed, ovate, toothed leaves, two or three inches long, strongly 3-nerved, and by a large, dark red root, astringent and capable of yielding a red dye. This last feature has given rise to another name for the plant in some localities—Red Root. In late spring and early summer the bushes are noticeable from the presence of abundant, feathery clusters of tiny, white, long-clawed flowers which, if examined closely, are seen to resemble minute hoods or bonnets extended at arm’s length. The leaves contain a small proportion of a bitter alkaloid called ceano- thine, and were long ago found to make a passable substitute for Chinese tea. During the Revolutionary War an infusion of the dried leaves as a beverage was in common use, both because of the odium at- tached to real tea after the taxation troubles with England, and from motives of necessity. Connois- seurs claim that the leaves should be dried in the shade. There are a score or more of species of Ceanothus indigenous to the Pacific coast, where
142
New Jersey TEA (Ceanothus Americanus)
143
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
they are known as ‘‘myrtle’’ or ‘‘wild lilae’’; but I have not heard of their leaves being used like those of the eastern species mentioned. These plants will be referred to again in the chapter on Vege- table Soaps.
Another of the Revolutionary War substitutes was the foliage of the so-called Labrador Tea (Ledum Groenlandicum, Oeder), a low evergreen shrub of cold bogs througheut Canada and the northeastern United States as far south as Pennsylvania. A dis- tinguishing feature is in the narrow, leathery leaves with margins rolled back and a coating of rusty wool on the under side. When pinched the foliage ex- hales a slight fragrance.
The familiar Sassafras of rich woods, old fields and fencerows on the Atlantic side of the country at- tracted attention very early in colonial days, and all sorts of virtues as a remedial agent were ascribed to it. During the Civil War, Sassafras tea became a common substitute for the Chinese article, and as a spring drink for purifying the system it still has a hold on the popular affection. The root is the part generally utilized, an infusion of the bark being made which is aromatic and stimulant. The flowers also may be similarly treated.
Of the same family with the Sassafras and of
144
BEVERAGE PLANTS
much the same distribution is the common Spice- wood, Wild Allspice, or Feverbush! (Lindera Ben- zoim, Blume), a shrubby denizen of damp woods and moist grounds, easily recognized in early spring hy the little bunches of honey-yellow flowers that stud the branches before the leaves appear. The whole bush is spicily fragrant, and a decoction of the twigs makes another pleasant substitute for tea, at one time particularly in vogue in the South. Dr. Porcher states that during the Civil War soldiers from the upper country in South Carolina serving in the company of which he was surgeon, came into camp fully supplied with Spicewood for making this fragrant, aromatic beverage. André Michaux, a French botanist who traveled afoot and horse-back through much of the eastern United States when it was still a wilderness, half starving by day and sleeping on a deer-skin at night, has left in his jour- nal the following record of the virtues of Spicewood tea, served him at a pioneer’s cabin: ‘‘I had supped the previous evening [February 9, 1796] on tea made from the shrub called Spicewood. A handful of young twigs or branches is set to boil and
1 Also called Benjamin-bush, corrupted from benzoin, an aromatic gum of the Orient which, however, is derived from quite another family of plants. French-Canadians used to call the Spicewood, powrier, which means pepper plant.
145
BEVERAGE PLANTS
after it has boiled at least a quarter of an hour, sugar is added and it is drunk like tea... . 1 was told milk makes it much more agreeable to the taste. This beverage restores strength, and it had that effect, for I was very tired when I arrived.’’ The searlet berries that cling like beads to the branches in the autumn used to be dried and powdered for use as a household spice, whence, obviously, the name Wild Allspice sometimes given to the shrub. The warm, birchy flavor of the creeping Winter- green (Gaultheria procumbens, L., the use of whose berries was noted in the previous chapter) could hardly have failed to attract attention to the plant as a likely substitute for Chinese tea when the latter was unobtainable; and one of its popular names, Teaberry, indicates that that is what happened—an infusion of the leaves being made. A pleasant and wholesome drink may also be made from the foliage of one of the Goldenrods—Solidago odora, Ait. This is a slender, low-growing species with one- sided panicles of flowers, not uncommon in dry or sandy soil from New England to Texas and dis- tinguished by an anise-like fragrance given off by the minutely dotted leaves when bruised. A com- mon name for it is Mountain Tea, and in some parts of the country the gathering of the leaves to dry and 147
SPICEWOOD (Lindera Benzoin)
146
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
peddle in the winter has formed a minor rural in- dustry, yielding a modest revenue.
The devotees of coffee, too, have found in the wilderness places substitutes for their cheering cup. One of these is the seed of the Kentucky Coffee-tree (Gymnocladus Canadensis, Lam.), a picturesque forest tree with double-compound leaves occurring from Canada to Oklahoma. In winter it is conspicu- ous because of the peculiar clubby bluntness of the bare branches, due to the absence of small twigs and branchlets, which gives to the whole tree a lifeless sort of look that gained for it among the French settlers the name Chicot, a stump. In the autumn the female trees (the species is diwecious) are seen hanging with brown, sickle-like pods six to eight inches long and an inch or two wide, and containing in the midst of a sweetish pulp several hard, flattish seeds. If we are to judge from the popular name it was probably the pioneers in Kentucky that first had an inspiration to roast these seeds and grind them for beverage purposes. The fact is, however, that a century ago such use of them was quite preva- lent in what was then the western wilderness, and travelers’ diaries of the time make frequent mention of the practice. The journal, for instance, of Major
148
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Long’s expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-20 records that while in winter camp on the Missouri River near Council Bluffs, the party substituted these seeds for coffee and found the beverage both palatable and wholesome. Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, who botanized the following year around the mouth of the Ohio River, testifies to the agree- ableness of the parched seeds as an article of diet, but thought that as a substitute for coffee they were ‘greatly inferior to cichorium.’’
Cichorium is the botanists’ way of saying Chicory, the plant that has been referred to already as pro- ducing leaves useful as a salad. Its root has had a rather bad name as an adulterant of coffee, in which delusive form it has perhaps entered more human stomachs than the human mind is aware of. As a drink in itself, sailing under its own colors, Chicory is not a bad drink, the root being first roasted and ground. It is rather surprising, by the way, to learn that a palatable{ beverage is possible from steeping the needles of the Hemlock tree (Tsuga Canadensis, Carr.)—which is not to be confused with the poisonous herb that Socrates died of. Hemlock tea is, or at least used to be, a favorite drink of the eastern lumbermen, and I have myself drunk it
149
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with a certain relish. Similarly the leaves of the magnificent Douglas Spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia, Britt.) of the Pacific coast produce by infusion a beverage which many Indians and some whites have esteemed as a substitute for coffee.
The Mint family, well advertised by the pro- nounced and usually agreeable fragrances given off by its members, has been utilized as a. source less of ordinary beverages than of medicinal teas, ad- ministered in fevers and digestive troubles. Such. plants of the former sort as have come to my notice are all western. One of these has, in fact, played both réles. This is the aromatic little vine known in California as Yerba Buena (the botanist’s Micro- meria Douglasit, Benth.), found in half shaded woods and damp ravines of the Coast Ranges from British Columbia to the neighborhood of Los An- geles. Its dried leaves steeped for a few minutes in hot water make a palatable beverage mildly stimulating to the digestion, and, like real tea, even provocative of gossip; for it is an historic little plant, this Yerba Buena, which gave name to the Mexican village out of which the city of San Fran- cisco afterwards rose. The two words, which mean literally ‘‘good herb,’’ are merely the Spanish for our term ‘‘garden mint,’’ of whose qualities the
150
(Micromeria Douglasii)
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wild plant somewhat partakes.1 Of the Mint tribe, also, is the herb Chia, about whose edible seeds something has been said. At the present day, Chia is better known as a drink than as a food. <A tea- spoonful of the seeds steeped in a tumbler of cold water for a few minutes communicates a mucilagin- -ous quality to the liquid. This may be drunk plain, but among tlre Mexicans, who are very fond of it as a refreshment, the customary mode of serving it is with the addition of a little sugar and a dash of lemon juice. The tiny seeds, which swim about in the mixture, should be swallowed also, and add nutrition to the beverage. A Spanish-California lady of the old school gave me my first glass of Chia, and recommended it as ‘‘mejor que ice-cream’’ (bet- ter than ice cream).
Of quite a different sort, but equally refreshing and easy to decoct, is the woodland drink called ‘‘Indian lemonade,’’ made from the crimson, berry- like fruits of certain species of Sumac. Hast of the Rockies there are three species abundant, dis-
1 The mint of the gardens (Mentha viridis and, to a less extent, M. piperita) is a common escape in damp ground and by streamsides throughout the country. In the Southwest the leaves, under the name of Yerba Buena, are used in the same way as those of Micro- meria. A steaming hot infusion of mint leaves is a bracing beverage highly esteemed by tired, wet vaqueros coming in at evening from their day’s work on the range.
152
Sumac (Rhus glabra)
153
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tinguished by compact, terminal, cone-like panicles of white flowers and pinnate leaves that turn all glorious in the autumn in tones of orange and red. They are Rhus typhina, L. (Staghorn Sumac), R. glabra, L. (Smooth Sumac), and R. copallina, L. (Dwarf Sumac). The first is sometimes a small tree; the others are shrubs. In the Rocky Moun- tain region and westward Rhus trilobata, Nutt., is frequent—the Squaw-bush, as it is called, because the branches are extensively used by the Indian women in basketry; and on the Pacific coast, Rhus ovata, Wats., and R. integrifolia, B. & H., stout shrubs or small trees, occur. The last two have leathery, entire leaves quite unlike those of the eastern species, and the white or pinkish flowers are borne in tight little clusters. The berries of all these sumacs are crimson and clothed with a hairy stickiness that is pleasantly acid and communicates a lemon-like taste to water in which the fruit has been soaked for a few minutes. These plants—par- ticularly the western species—are often found grow- ing on hot, waterless hillsides, and their fruits offer a grateful refreshment to the thirsty traveler, whether sucked in the mouth until bared of their acid coating, or steeped in water to serve as a woodland lemonade. The three far western species are com- 154
LEMONADE-BERRBY (Rhus integrifolia)
155
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monly known as Lemonade-berry, and R. integri- folia is also sometimes called ‘‘mahogany’’ because of its hard wood, dark red at the heart. The Spanish people call it mangla, a name they give to some other sumacs as well.
The berries of the Manzanita, a Pacific coast shrub that was described in an earlier. chapter, make an exceptionally agreeable cider. This is one of the harmless beverages of Indian invention, and I can- not, perhaps, do better than to quote the method that Chesnut describes in his treatise on the ‘‘Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California.’’ Ripe berries, carefully selected to exclude any that are worm-eaten, are scalded for a few minutes or until the seeds are soft, and then crushed with a potato masher. To a quart of this pulp an equal quantity of water is added, and the mass is then poured over a layer of dry pine needles or straw placed in a shallow sieve basket and allowed to drain into a vessel beneath; or sometimes the mass is allowed to stand an hour or so before straining. When cool, the cider, which is both spicy and acid, is ready for use without the addition of sugar. A better quality of cider is said to result if the pulp alone is used. The dried berries, in the latter case, are pounded to a coarse powder, and then by clever
: 156
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manipulation and tossing in a flat basket—a process at which the Indian woman is an adept—the heavier bits of seed are made to roll off while the fine par- ticles of pulp cling to the basket.
The desert, too, has its beverage plants. There, if anywhere, pure water takes its place as the most luxurious of drinks, and the sands bear at least one group of plants from which good water may be obtained, namely, the Barrel Cactuses (Echinocac- tus) of the Southwest, of which something has been said under another head. The juices of most cacti, while often plentiful, are as often bitter to nauseous- ness; but those of the Barrel Cactus—or at least of certain species—are quite drinkable, and the rotund, keg-like plants serve a very important purpose as reservoirs of soft water. This is readily obtainable by horizontally slicing off the top and pounding up the succulent, melon-like pulp with a hatchet or piece of blunt, hard wood that is not bitter. In this way the watery content is released and may be dipped out with a cup. In the case of some species, I believe, the juice is too much impregnated with mineral substances to be drinkable; but in others—as Echino- cactus Wislizeni, Engelm., E. Emoryi, Engelm., and E. cylindraceus, Engelm.—the fluid obtained is clear and pleasant to the taste, quenching the thirst satis-
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factorily.° An odd and all but forgotten use of these vegetable water barrels of the desert is their former employment by Indians as cooking vessels. The fleshy interior was scooped out and the shell treated as a pot, into which water (secured by the mashing up of the pulp) was poured, heated with hot stones and these withdrawn as they cooled and replaced with hotter. Meantime the meat and other edibles were dropped in and allowed to simmer until done. Upon breaking camp, the cook abandoned her im- promptu kettle, depending upon finding material for a new one at the next stopping place.
Throughout the arid and semi-desert regions of the Southwest from New Mexico to Southern California, a peculiar plant called Ephedra by the botanists is abundant. There are several recognized species but all have so strong a family resemblance that in popular parlance they are lumped as one and spoken of as Desert Tea or Teamster’s Tea. They are shrubby plants, two or three feet high, greenish- yellow and distinguished by slim, cylindrical, many- jointed stems and abundant opposite branches, the leaves reduced to mere scales. The clustered flow- ers, inconspicuous and borne in the axils of the branches, are of two sorts on different plants, the pistillate producing solitary, black seeds of intense
158
Cpl aded 995) “unsiusofyoy unip ‘S}1asap UlojsaMyyNoOS oy} -ogouay) 4ooy deos BIUIOTYyeD V jo Joiteq Jovem apqeyasoa eB ‘snqjoeooulyoy
BEVERAGE PLANTS
bitterness. The plant is well stocked with tannin, and an infusion of the branches—green or dried—in boiling water has long been in favor with the desert people, red and white. Desert Tea was first adopted by the white explorers and frontiersmen as a me- dicinal drink, supposed to act as a blood purifier and to be especially efficacious in the first stages of venereal diseases; but its use at meals as an ordinary hot beverage in substitution for tea or coffee is by no means uncommon, and cowboys will sometimes tell you they prefer it to any other. The Spanish- speaking people call the plant Cafiutillo, a word meaning little tube or pipe. Similarly used is the Encwmilla or Chaparral Tea (Croton corymbulosus, Engelm.), a gray-leaved plant of the Euphorbia family found in western Texas and adjacent regions. The flowering tops are the part employed, and an infusion of them is palatable to many. Dr. Havard, in an article on ‘‘The Drink Plants of the North American Indians,’’? stated that in his experience not only Mexicans and Indians enjoyed it, but that the colored United States soldiers of the southwest- ern frontier preferred it to coffee. The plant con- tains certain volatile oils but apparently no stimu- lating principle. Thelesperma, a Southwestern
2 Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club. Vol. XXIII, No. 2. 159
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
genus of herbaceous plants of the Composite family, somewhat resembling Coreopsis, with opposite, finely dissected, strong-scented leaves and yellow flowers (sometimes without rays), furnishes a species or two used as substitutes for tea by the Mexican population. Thelesperma longipes, Gray, occur- ring from western Texas to Arizona, is commonly known as Cota, and is said to give a red color to the water in which it is boiled.
Much more appealing to the average taste is a drink that Mexicans sometimes make from the oily kernels of the jojoba nut of Southern California and northern Mexico (Simmondsia Californica, described previously). Mr. Walter Nordhoff, of San Diego and Los Angeles, informs me that the process fol- lowed is first to roast them and then treat them in the same way as the Spanish people prepare their chocolate. This, I believe, is to grind the kernels together with the yolk of hard boiled egg, and boil the pasty mass in water with the addition of sugar and milk. When they can afford it a pleasant flavor- ing is given by steeping a vanilla bean for a moment or two in the hot beverage. This makes a nourish- ing drink as well as a savory substitute for one’s morning chocolate or coffee. A substitute for choco- late among the American population of some sec-
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tions of the United States is furnished by the reddish- brown, creeping rootstock of the Purple or Water Avens (Geum rivale, L.), a perennial herb with coarse, pinnate basal leaves and 5-petaled, purplish, nodding flowers, borne on erect stems a couple of feet high. The plant is frequent in low grounds and swamps throughout much of the northern part of the United States and in Canada, as well as in Eu- rope and Asia. The rootstock is characterized by a clove-like fragrance and a tonic, astringent prop- erty, and has been used by country people in decoction as a beverage, with milk and sugar, under the name of Indian Chocolate or Chocolate-root. It is the color, however, rather than the taste that has suggested the common name. Lucinda Haynes Lombard, writing in ‘‘The American Botanist’’ for November, 1918, mentions a curious popular super- stition to the effect that friends provided with Avens leaves are able to converse with one another though many miles apart and speaking in whispers! Readers of literature concerning old time explora- tions in America will perhaps recall passages in the reports of various writers devoted to accounts of a beverage called Yaupon, Cassena, or the Black Drink, formerly in great vogue among the Indians of the Southern Atlantic States and colonies. One 161
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of those ancient chroniclers who did so much to misinform Europe about the New World and its products, speaks of this Black Drink as a veritable elixir that would ‘‘wonderfully enliven and invig- orate the heart with genuine, easie sweats and transpirations, preserving the mind free and serene, keeping the body brisk and lively, not for an hour or two, but for as many days, without other nourish- ment or subsistence.’’ (!) William Bartram, to whose account of the Indian uses of Southern plants something over a century ago reference was made in an earlier chapter, speaks of spending a night with an Indian chief in Florida, smoking tobacco and drinking Cassena from conch shells. Bartram does not seem to have liked his Cassena, and in point of fact few white people ever did; but the wide prevalence of its consumption among the Southern Indians, who once drove a brisk inter-tribal trade in the leaves, and the fact that the Cassena plant is nearly related to the famous. Paraguyan drink yerba maté, have created some latter-day interest in the Black Drink. The plant from which it is made is a species of spineless Holly or Tex (J. vomitoria, Ait.), frequent in low woods from Virginia to Florida and Texas. It is a shrub, or sometimes a modest tree, with small, evergreen leaves which are elliptic in 162
BEVERAGE PLANTS
shape and notched around the edge, and in autumn the branches are prettily studded with red berries about the size of peas. An analysis of the dried
CASSENA (Ilex vomitoria)
leaves reveals a small percentage (one-quarter of
one per cent.) of caffeine, about half the quantity of
the same alkaloid that is contained in the leaves of 163
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
maté (Ilex Paraguayensis). The leaves were cus- tomarily toasted, thoroughly boiled in water, and then cooled by pouring rapidly from one vessel to another and back again, which also developed frothi- ness. The liquid is, as the name indicates, of a black color, and is quite bitter. Dr. HE. M. Hale, who made a special study of the subject and had the results published by the United States Department of Agri- culture * a number of years ago, pronounced it a not unpleasant beverage, for which a liking might read- ily be acquired as for maté, tea or coffee—in fact somewhat suggesting in taste an inferior grade of black tea. When very strong from long boiling, it will act as an emetic—a consummation lightly re- garded by the Indians, who merely drank again. Two other species of Ilex growing wild throughout a greater part of the length of our Atlantic seaboard possess leaves that have been similarly used as sub- stitutes for Chinese tea. One is J. glabra, Gray, popularly known as Inkberry, a rather low-growing shrub of sandy soils near the coast, with shiny, wedge-shaped, evergreen leaves, and ink-black ber- ries; the other, J. verticillata, Gray, a much taller shrub, with deciduous foliage, and bright red berries clustered around the stems and persisting in winter.
3 Bulletin 14, Division of Botany.
164
BEVERAGE PLANTS
The latter species is called in common speech Black Alder or Winter-berry, and frequents swampy «ground as far west as the Mississippi.
The spicy, aromatic inner bark and young twigs of the Sweet or Cherry Birch (Betula lenta, L.) also deserve mention, as the basis of that old-time domes- tic brew, birch beer. The characteristic flavor is due to an oil like that distilled from Wintergreen (Gaul- theria procumbens). This species of birch is a graceful forest tree with leaves and bark suggesting a cherry, and is of frequent occurrence in rich wood- lands of the Atlantic seaboard States. The sap is sweet, like the Sugar Maple’s, and may be similarly gathered and boiled down into a sugar. The nearly related River Birch (Betula nigra, L.), a denizen of low grounds and streamsides throughout much of the eastern United States, particularly southward, is a potential fountain in early spring when the sap is running. At that season, if you stab the trunk with a knife, stick into the cut a splinter to act as a spout, then set a cup beneath to catch the drippings, you will have shortly a draught as clear and cool as spring water, with an added suggestion of sugar. The tree is distinguished by slender, drooping branches, which sleet storms in winter sometimes badly shatter and break. From such untended
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wounds, hundreds in number, the sap later on will drop pattering to the ground; and I have stepped from bright sunshine on a March day into the shadow | of one of these trees and been sprinkled by the descending spray as by a shower of rain.
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CHAPTER VIII VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute. Wordsworth.
MONG the pleasant pictures of my mental gal-
lery is one of an autumn evening at a Pueblo Indian village in New Mexico, where I chanced to be afew years ago. The sun was near setting, seeking his nightly lodging in the home of his mother, who, according to the ancient Indian idea, lives in the hidden regions of the west; on the house-tops the corn huskers were gathering into baskets the multi- colored ears that represented the day’s labor; along the trail from the well some laughing girls were filing, with dripping jars of water on their heads; the village flocks, home from the plain, were crowd- ing bleating into corrals; and from open doors came the steady hum of metates, the fragrance of grinding corn, and the shrill music of the women’s mealing songs. Then up the street came pattering a couple of burros loaded with fire-wood and driven by an
167
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old Indian man. Immediately three or four women appeared at house doors and called inquiringly ‘‘amole?’’ The old man halted his donkeys, lifted from one a sack, out of which he drew several pieces of thick, blackish root, which he distributed impar- tially among the women, and then proceeded on his way. The root, it transpired, was a sort of vegetable soap and answered to that strange word of the women, amole. This, in fact, is the name current throughout our Spanish Southwest for several com- mon wild plants indigenous to that region, and rich enough in saponin to furnish in their roots a natural and satisfactory substitute for commercial soap. Several are species of the familiar Yucca—in particular Y. baccata, Y. angustifolia and Y. glauca. Americans who prefer their own names for things call them soap-root, when they do not say Spanish bayonet, or Adam’s Thread-and-Needle or just Yucca. All three species mentioned have large, thick rootstocks firmly and deeply seated in the earth, so that a pick or crow-bar is needed to uproot them. Before the white traders introduced the sale of com- mercial soap, amole was universally used by Mexi- cans and Indians for washing purposes, and the practice is not yet obsolete by any means. The rootstock is broken up into convenient sizes and 168
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
washed free from any adhering dirt and grit. Then, when needed, a piece is mashed with a stone or hammer, dropped into a vessel containing water, cold or warm, and rubbed vigorously up and down until an abundant lather results—and this comes very quickly. After dipping out the fibre and broken fragments, the suds are ready for use. They answer every purpose of soap, and are particularly agreeable in their effect upon the skin, leaving it soft and comfortable. A shampoo of amole is, among the long-haired Southwestern Indians, not only a luxury but a prescribed preliminary to cere- monies of the native religious systems. Even whites recognize the efficacy of the root, and an American manufacturer in the Middle West has for years been making a toilet soap with the rootstock of Yucca baccata as a basis. It is put upon the market under the name of Amole Soap.
Certain species of Agave, that is, the Century Plant fraternity, are frequent along the Mexican border and contain saponin in greater or less quan- tity, affording a soap substitute as do the Yuccas. Best known, perhaps, is the species that Spanish- speaking residents call lechuguilla (botanically, Agave lechuguilla, Torr.). This is distinguished by a cluster of radical, yellowish-green, spine-tipped,
169
‘USEFUL WILD PLANTS
fleshy leaves, few in number (rarely over fifteen) and barely a foot long, the flowers borne in a close panicle almost like a spike. The short trunk of the plant is, I believe, the part usually used for soap; but Dr. J. N. Rose, in his ‘‘Notes on Useful Plants of Mexico,’’ quotes Havard as authority for the state- ment that saponin is found in the leaves of this species. The rootstock of a related Texan species (A. variegata, Jacobi) is also soapy, and the paper by Dr. Rose just mentioned quotes a statement by a resident: of Brownsville, Texas, to the effect that a piece of the rootstock of the latter species as big as a walnut, grated and mixed with a quart of warm water, will clean a whole suit of clothes. The most used Agave-amoles, however, are plants of Mexico, the discussion of which would not be perti- nent here.
Of wide occurrence in California is an amole of quite a different appearance. It is the bulbous root of a plant of the Lily family, by botanists fearfully and wonderfully called Chlorogalum pomeridianum, Kunth. The average American simplifies this into California Soap-plant. Its first appearance is shortly after the winter rains set in, and for several months all that one sees of it is a cluster of stemless, grass-like, crinkly leaves, lolling weakly on the
170
CALIFORNIA SOAP-PLANT (Chlorogalum pomeridianum)
171
CALIFORNIA SOAP-PLANT (Chlorogalum pomeridianum)
172
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
ground. Late in the spring, a slender flower stalk puts up and at the height of four or five feet breaks into a widely spreading panicle of white, lily-like but small blossoms, that open a few at a time at evening, shine like stars through the night and wither away the next morning. To the economist the most interesting part of the plant is subter- ranean. This is a bottle-shaped bulb, rather deep set in the ground, and thickly clad in a coat of coarse, brown fibre. When this fibre is stripped off, a moist heart is disclosed an inch or two in diameter and about twice as long. Crush this, rub it up briskly in water, and a lather results as in the case of Yucca and quite as efficacious for cleansing. In- deed, the absence of alkali—an absence that is .a characteristic of the amoles—makes the suds es- pecially valuable for washing delicate fabrics. Some users of this California amole prefer first to rub the crushed bulb directly upon the material to be washed, just as one would do with a cake of soap, and then manipulate the article in the clear water. The lather is said to be also useful for removing dandruff. However that may be, it unquestionably makes an excellent shampoo and leaves the hair soft and glossy. The bulbs may be used either fresh or after having been kept dry for months. Our knowl- 173
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
edge of the cleansing property resident in this bulb is a gift from the California Indian, who, in spite of the popular notion to the contrary, has a taste— though not an extravagant taste—for cleanliness.
Another well-known California soap plant is a species of Pig-weed (Chenopodium Californicum, Wats.), abundant throughout much of the State in arroyos and on moist hillsides. It is a stout, weedy- looking herb, with inconspicuous, greenish flowers in slender, terminal spikes, and toothed, triangular leaves turning yellow and dying as the dry season advances. The stout stems, a foot or two high, grow numerously from the crown of a very deep-seated, spindle-shaped root which is at times a foot long and requires industrious digging to lift it from its earthy bed. While fresh it is rather brittle and readily crushed with a hammer, when, if agitated in water, it quickly communicates a soapy frothiness to the liquid, and is cleansing like the other suds noted. The roots may be laid away for use when dry, in which state they are as hard almost as stone, and require to be grated or ground in a handmill before using. The saponaceous property in this root was also discovered first by the Indians.
1 The roots of the Southern Buckeye or Horsechestnut (Aesculus Pavia, L.) are rich in saponin, and Dr. Porcher states that their
174
A Pacific Coast soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). The bulb, stripped of its fibrous covering, is highly saponaceous. The fiber is useful for making coarse brushes and mattresses,
Tunas, fruit of a Southwestern cactus—Showing how it is opened to secure the meaty pulp. (See page 109.) 2
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
The soap plants thus far named must, from the nature of the case, suffer extermination in the fulfilling of their mission, but there are others in- digenous to the United States that need not be killed to serve. First among these may be mentioned the genus Ceanothus, one species of which—the New Jersey Tea—has already claimed attention in the chapter on Beverage Plants. The genus comprises about thirty-five species, nearly all shrubs or small trees confined to the western United States and northern Mexico. They are particularly abundant on the Pacific Coast, and are popularly known as ‘‘wild lilac’’ and ‘‘myrtle’’ (one or two species as ‘‘buck brush’’). They are frequently an important element in the chaparral cover of the mountain sides, and in the spring their flowers create beautiful effects in such situations, forming unbroken sheets of white or blue, acres in extent. The fresh blossoms of many species—perhaps of most or even all—are saponaceous, and rubbed in water produce a cleans- ing lather that is a good substitute for toilet soap. Care must be exercised, however, to pick off any green footstalks that cling to the flowers, as these suds are preferable to commercial soap for washing and whitening
woolens, blankets and dyed cottons, the colors of which are improved by the process.
175
°
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
tend to give the suds a greenish tinge and a weedy smell. This floral soap is not only perfectly cleans- ing but leaves the skin soft and faintly fragrant. It is a poetic sort of ablution, this bathing with a handful of snowy blossoms plucked from a bush and a little water dipped out of the brook, and revives our faith in the Golden Age, when Nature’s friendly outstretched hand was less lightly regarded than nowadays. Similiarly of use are the fresh, green seed-vessels, though these often have a resinous coating that is apt to cause a yellowish stain, if the rinsing is not perfect. , The cherished Balloon vine of our gardens does not include soapiness among its charms, but it can at least claim cousinship with some of the world’s most famous soap plants—namely, certain species of the genus Sapindus, trees or shrubs native to the warmer regions of both hemispheres. The name Sapindus means ‘‘soap of the Indies,’’ where, as well as in China and Japan, several species have been drawn upon for detergent material from very early times, and are still in favor for washing the hair and deli- eate goods, such as silk. Within the limits of the United States, three species are indigenous: Sap- indus saponaria, L., abundant from Brazil to the West Indies, finds a lodgment on the extreme south- 176
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
ern tip of Florida, and besides its soapy possibilities possesses seeds, hard and black, that serve for beads and buttons; S. marginatus, Willd., an evergreen tree sometimes sixty feet in height, occurs along our southern Atlantic seaboard from the Carolinas to Florida; 8S. Drummondii, H. & A., ranges from Kansas to Louisiana and westward to Arizona, and is known to Americans as Soap-berry or Wild China tree,? and to the Spanish-speaking people as jabon- cillo (little soap). All three species are trees with pinnate leaves (non-deciduous in the first two) and small, white flowers borne in terminal panicles; and all produce fleshy berries about the size of cherries and containing one or two seeds. It is in these berries that the soapy property dwells, and this is readily communicated to water in which the berries are rubbed up. In the case of 8. Drummondu, the clusters of yellow berries (turning black as they dry) are a conspicuous feature of the bare winter branches, for it is their habit to persist on the trees until spring.
Also of the West is a species of gourd occurring in dry soil from Nebraska to Mexico and westward to the Pacific. In some sections it is known as
2 From its resemblance to the true China tree (Melia Azedarach), extensively planted for ornament and shade in the Southern States.
177
SoaP-BERRY (Sapindus marginatus)
178
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
Missouri Gourd and in California as Mock Orange. Botanically it is Cucurbita foetidissuma, HBK, and the rank, garlicky odor given off by the crushed leaves makes the specific appellation very apropos. It is a coarse, creeping vine with solitary, showy, yellow flowers and robust, triangular leaves that have a fashion of standing upright in hot weather, like ears; and it spreads so industriously that at the summer’s end its tip may be as much as twenty-five feet away from the starting point, which is the crown of a deep-seated, woody, perennial root shaped like a carrot. In the autumn the shriveling leaves reveal numerous, round, yellow gourds, which conspicu- ously dot the ground and are likely at first glance to deceive one into thinking them spilled oranges—a fact that accounts for one popular name. These gourds are pithy, but such pulp as they contain, as well as in the roots, is saponaceous, and crushed in water both fruit and root yield a cleansing lather. It is, however, apt to leave the skin with a harsh feeling for a few moments, not altogether pleasant. There appears to be saponin in the vine also, since Doctor Edward Palmer has stated that in northern Mexico a Cucurbita, that is undoubtedly this species, has been extensively used by laundresses who mash up the vines with the gourds and add all to their 179
Missourrt GourD (Cucurbita foetidissima)
180
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
wash water. To wear under-clothes thus washed, one must be indifferent to the prickles of the rough hairs and broken fibre that are of necessity mingled with the water. Among the Spanish-speaking ' people of the Southwest, this gourd goes by the name Calabasilla. In old plants the root is some- times six feet long and five or six inches in diameter. This, descending perpendicularly into the earth, enables the plant to reach moisture in arid wastes where shallow-rooted plants would perish. The dried gourds, it may be added, may be very conven- iently used as darning-balls.
Probably the most widely known of all our Ameri- can soap plants—though not all who know the plant are aware that it bears soap in its gift—is an herb of the Pink family that used to have a corner in many old-fashioned gardens under the name of Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis, L.). It is a smooth, buxom sort of plant with stems a foot or two tall and noticeably swollen at the joints, oval, ribbed leaves set opposite to each other in two’s, and dense clusters of white or pink 5-petaled flowers. It is not a native-born American, but came hither from Europe early in the white immigration and has now become naturalized in many parts of the country near the settlements of men, where it is often so 181
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
common as to be classed as a weed. The juice of the roots is mucilaginous and soapy, producing a
Bouncine Bet (Saponaria officinalis)
lather when agitated in water, and the peasantry
in some parts of Europe use it to-day for soap. By
the brothers in European monasteries, centuries ago, 182
VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP
its virtue as a capital cleansing agent was well un- derstood, and they employed it for scouring cloth and removing stains. They gave it, in monkish fashion, a Latin name, herba fullonwm, which in English translation, Fuller’s herb, is sometimes still assigned it in books; but in every-day speech the rustic English name, Soapwort, is more usual. In our Southern States a pretty local name that has come to my notice is ‘‘My Lady’s Wash-bowl.’’ It was in a Saponaria, I believe, that the glucoside saponin—the detergent principle of the soap plants —was first discovered and given its name. That was about a century ago, and since then chemists have identified the same substance existing in vary- ing degrees in several hundred species throughout the world.2 In most plants, however, the quantity is too small to make a serviceable lather.
3N. Kruskal. “Soaps of the Vegetable Kingdom,” in “The Pharmaceutical Era,” Vol. XXXI, Nos. 13, 14.
183
CHAPTER IX
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS WORTH KNOWING
Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. Benvouio. For what, I pray thee? Romeo. For your broken shin.
Romeo and Juliet.
HE subject of medicinal plants is one that I approach with considerable reluctance; be- cause, though the employment of wild herbs as reme- dies has been a cherished practice with sick humanity whether savage or civilized from the earliest times, there exists still great diversity of opinion about the efficacy of particular simples. One has only to thumb over any ancient herbal or old botanical manual or the succeeding editions of pharmacopeias to notice the decline and fall of one popular medicinal plant after another with the progress of the years, and so to become rather skeptical about the whole subject. Nevertheless, it is a poor chaff-pile that does not hold some kernels of pure grain; and this chapter, without professing to trench upon the prov- 184
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
ince of- the chemist who distils and extracts a multitude of medicines from the herbs of the field, will call attention to a few of those plants growing wild whose reputation for the relief of some simple disorders appears well grounded. At any rate they are harmless.
Such medicinal wildings may be classed under two principal heads: those occurring also in Europe or Asia, or naturalized here from the Old World, their uses therefore being part of the white race’s tra- ditional knowledge; and those indigenous plants that found place in the medical practice of the Indians, from whom we have got a hint of their value.
In the former class one of the best known is Yarrow or Milfoil (Achillea Millefolium, L.), a per- ennial herb a foot or two high, of the Composite family, with flat-topped clusters of small, usually white-rayed flower-heads, and finely dissected leaves. It is found throughout the United States and much of Canada'in various soils and situations, and was said by Frémont to be one of the commonest of plants observed during the whole of one of his transconti- nental journeys. The entire plant above ground may be dried and an infusion of it (a pint of boiling water poured upon a handful) may be administered for a run-down condition or a disordered digestion,
185
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
the action being that of a mildly stimulating bitter tonic. The familiar Hoar-hound (Marrubium vul- gare, L.), originally introduced from Europe for a garden herb in the Atlantic States, has long since taken out naturalization papers as an American, and is now found wild across the continent and from Maine to Texas. It is a somewhat bushy perennial of the Mint family, with square, white-woolly stems, grayish, roundish leaves prominently veined and wrinkled, and small, white flowers densely clustered in the leaf axils. The calyx of the flower is provided with ten short teeth hooked at the tips, which catch readily in the coats of passing animals or people’s clothing, facilitating the spread of the plant. The dried herb is tonic and a bitter tea made of it is a time-honored household remedy for debility and colds, being expectorant and promotive of perspira- tion. In large doses it proves laxative.
Apropos of laxatives, an indigenous wild plant that has been popularly esteemed in this regard and whose value was detected because of the herb’s rela- tionship to the famous Senna of the Old World, is Cassia Marylandica, L., commonly known as Wild or American Senna. The leaves, collected upon the maturing of the seeds, and dried, used to be among the offerings of the Shaker herbalists. An infusion
i 186
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
of them may be made in the proportion of about an ounce of the leaves to a pint of boiling water—the dose, two or three fluid ounces of the liquid, repeated
Witp SENNA (Cassia Marylandica)
if needful. The American plant contains the same
general principles as the Old World species but in
less proportion, and is correspondingly less active.
It is a stout, herbaceous perennial, three to eight 187
Witp SENNA (Cassia Marylandica)
188
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
feet high, bearing pinnate leaves and showy racemes of yellow flowers in the upper leaf-axils, followed in autumn by long, curved pods or legumes, and occurs in damp ground and swamps from the Missis-' sippi Valley to the Atlantic; and from the Canadian border to the Gulf.
Another plant which, although indigenous, I be- lieve, only to America, is so near akin to a popular tonic herb of Europe that its use may have first been suggested by the resemblance, is Boneset (Eupa- torium perfoliatum, L.). This is a stout, hairy per- ennial of the Composite tribe, with rather narrow, pointed, wrinkled leaves opposite in pairs upon the stem and united around it at the base, so as to make each pair present the appearance of one long leaf skewered through the middle; whence another com- mon name for the plant, Thoroughwort. The large clusters of white flower-heads are rayless. The leaves and flowering tops are dried, and a bitter tea is made of them. Taken cold, this is tonic and stimulating in small doses and laxative in large ones. The hot infusion is an old-time remedy for a fresh cold or sore throat, and may be taken during the cold stage of malarial fever. The plant is common in low meadows and damp grounds throughout the eastern United States and Canada.
189
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
BoNnESET (Eupatorium perfoliatum)
And of course every holder to the old traditions is loyal to Wild Cherry bark. This is taken from the familiar Wild Cherry tree (Prunus serotina, Ehrh.), growing along streams and fence-rows and in
190
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
woods from eastern Canada to Texas. It is from forty to eighty feet high and identifiable by its shiny green leaves (too often a prey to caterpillars) and
(Prunus serotina)
its close racemes of small white flowers succeeded
by small, black, juicy, flattened fruit with a bitter
but vinous flavor. An infusion of the dried bark 191
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
(gathered preferably in the autumn) in cold water, in the proportion of one-half ounce of bark to a pint of water, enjoys a reputation both as a mild sedative suited to cases of nervous excitability and as a tonic adapted to debility and impaired digestion. Also of popular esteem as a stimulant to digestion and a remedy for dyspeptic conditions is the root of the Sweet-flag or Calamus (Acorus Calamus, L.). This plant is a denizen of swamps and stream borders throughout the eastern United States, usually grow- ing directly in the water and often in company with cat-tails. Its erect, sword-like leaves, three to four feet tall, are pleasantly aromatic, and this fragrance serves to distinguish the plant, when out of flower, from the somewhat similar-looking Blue-flag or Iris, whose roots are reputed to be poisonous. The Sweet-flag belongs to the Arum family, and its flow- ering is as curious as inconspicuous, being produced as a compact, greenish spike from the side of a stalk, the interior of which is sweet. The rootstock, dug in the autumn or spring, washed and then dried, is chewed asa stomachic. The unpeeled root is more efficacious than the peeled.
It was the popularity of the Old World Pennyroyal doubtless that first caused attention to be directed to a little minty annual common in dry soil and old
192
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
fields pretty much throughout the United States east of the Mississippi and called American Pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides, Pers.). It is pungently aro- matic, from a few inches to a foot tall, with small, opposite leaves nar- rowing to the base and tiny, bluish flow- ers clustered in the upper leaf-axils. The plant contains a volatile oil, and a hot infusion of the dried leaves and flowering tops is an old-fash- -qa4g ioned remedy for flat- ulent colic, sick stom- ach and bowel com- plaints. Then there is the nearly related Dittany (Cunila Mar- poms
1ana, L), growing on (Cunila Mariana) dry woodland hills from New York to Florida, a perennial plant of about the height of the American Pennyroyal, but with larger leaves, rounded at the base and conspicuously clear-dotted. The herb is gently stimulant, and a tea made of it is a pleasant
193
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
and refreshing beverage that is sudorific and has a respectable place among the rural remedies for feb- rile conditions. Dr. Porcher quoted an old-time South Carolinian as saying that ‘‘everybody cured everything with dittany.’’
The plants whose seeds, crushed to a flour and sifted, constitute the mustard of commerce and mus- tard plasters, are principally two, both of which, though native to the Old World, are found abun- dantly growing wild within our limits. The more common is Black Mustard (Brassica nigra, L.), occupying roadsides, fields and waste land on both sides of our continent. It is a stout, much- branched herb, with coarse, deeply lobed basal leaves, and varies in height from two to twelve or fifteen feet. Its most robust development in this country is on the Pacific coast, where in the spring its showy racemes of yellow flowers make solid sheets of color on the plains and mesas, acre upon acre, to the delight of tourists and the disgust of the land- owners. In Syria it attains similar proportions and is believed to be the mustard of the gospel parable. The other Mustard plant is the closely related Bras- sica alba, (L.) Boiss., popularly known as White Mustard. It is rarely over two feet high, and is distinguished from its black cousin by hairiness of
194
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
stem and seed pod, the latter usually constricted between the seeds.
Among a considerable portion of our population the Indians have enjoyed from very early times a reputation for special knowledge in the remedial properties of wild plants; but doubtless they have been credited much in excess of their deserts. Nevertheless, there are some of the aboriginal reme- dies worthy of all respect. Prominent among them are two or three plants of the Pacifie Coast. One of these seems first to have been brought to light through the contact of the Franciscan missionaries of the eighteenth century with the Indians of South- ern California, and is still quite generally known by its Spanish name, Cascara sagrada, that is ‘‘sacred bark.’’ It is a shrub or small tree of the genus Rhamnus, with somewhat elliptic, prominently veined leaves, abundant clusters of tiny yellowish flowers in spring succeeded in the autumn by a con- spicuous crop of inedible berries turning yellowish- crimson and finally black. The plant is considered by some botanists as of one variable species (Rham- nus Californica, Esch.), and by others as of two—the name R. Purshiana, DC., being applied to the arbo- real form, which is common through the northern coast regions as far as British Columbia and east-
195 F
g ua anny
om FNS a
CASCARA SAGRADA (Rhamnus California)
196
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
ward to the Rockies, attaining a height at times of thirty feet or so, with a trunk a foot in diameter. In that region it goes by a number of names as Chittem- wood, Wahoo and Bitter-bark. Other local names are Pigeon-berry and Wild Coffee—the latter be- cause of some superficial resemblance of the seeds to coffee beans. The shrubby form, common in Southern California and the Great Basin region, is from a few to a dozen feet high, forming usually a dense clump touching the ground.
The medicinal value of the Cascara sagrada is in the bark, which is regarded as one of the safest and best laxatives in the world, especially valuable in eases of chronic constipation. It acts, at the same time, as a tonic and tends to improve the appetite. For the best results the bark should be collected in the autumn or early spring and at least a year before being used. A small piece of the bark put into a glass of cold water and allowed to soak over night makes a useful tonic, drunk first thing in the morn- ing. For a laxative, hot water should be poured upon the bark in the proportion of a teacupful to a level teaspoonful of the finely broken bark, set away to cool, and drunk just before bed-time. Country people have told me that the fresh bark boiled sev- eral hours is equally efficacious. The gathering of
197
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Cascara sagrada for the medical trade is an im- portant minor industry in the Pacific Northwest, the bark of the Purshiana or arboreal form being the kind preferred. There is a considerable European demand for it, as well as from American chemists. Another of the famous Pacific Coast remedies is Yerba Santa, whose Spanish name (meaning ‘‘holy herb’’) also betrays its connection with the Cali- fornia Mission days, when the Padres not only instructed Indians but now and then learned some- thing from them. An American common name for the plant—Consumptive’s Weed!—indicates one of its popular uses. It has, in fact, been esteemed for generations in California as an expectorant, a blood purifier, and a tonic—a standby in all bronchial and respiratory troubles. Botanically it is Eriodictyon glutinosum, Benth., and is a shrubby plant, three to seven feet high, with dark green, resinous leaves (shaped somewhat like those of the peach) glutinous and shining on the upper side and whitish under- neath, the flowers tubular, clustered and usually purple but sometimes white. It is abundant on dry hillsides and among the chaparral throughout much of California and southward into Mexico. A bitter
1 Others are Mountain Balm, Gum Leaves, Bear’s-weed and Wild Peach.
198
i ~ 7 ‘:. = ah We X Ws (ee ~ \ — 3 Rat s OZ. | NN ley 75 - : Pa, a
\ N Wes ab: =
LP SS So
YERBA SanrTa (Eriodictyon glutinosum)
199
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
tea is made of the dried leaves and taken freely; or it may be prepared by boiling with sugar, if it is * desired to disguise the bitterness. The pounded leaves have also been used as a poultice, bound upon sores.
The civilized drug Grindelia is derived from certain species of a botanic genus of that name be- longing to the Sunflower family and occurring rather abundantly on the plains and dry hillsides west of the Mississippi. They are coarse, sticky plants, characterized by white, gummy exudations upon the buds and flower heads (these latter are conspicuously yellow-rayed) and are popularly called, on that account, Gum-plants. The California Indians are credited with being the pioneers in dis- covering the remedial secret of these plants, the species most used by them being apparently Grin- delia robusta, Nutt. A decoction of the leaves and flowering tops collected during the early period of bloom is a mild stomachic, and is taken to purify the blood, as well as to relieve throat and lung troubles.
The Indian is also to be thanked for our knowl- edge of Yerba Mansa (or more correctly, Yerba del Manso, ‘‘the herb of the tamed Indian’’), common in wet, alkaline soil throughout much of the South-
200
YerBaA MANSA (Anemopsis Californica)
201
\ USEFUL WILD PLANTS
west—a low-growing perennial, carpeting the ground with its dock-like leaves and starred in spring with conical spikes of small, greenish florets, subtended by showy involucres of white bracts. It is the botanists’ Anemopsis Californica, H. & A. The pep- pery, aromatic root is astringent, and is chewed raw, after drying, for affections of the mucous membrane, and also made into a tea for purifying the blood. It is one of the most popular of remedies among the Mexican population, who employ it also to relieve coughs and indigestion or pretty much any- thing. As an external remedy for cuts, bruises and sores on man or beast, either the tea or a poultice of the wilted leaves is employed.
For external use in such cases, two other western plants are valuable, particularly for the healing of that bane of the horseman, the saddle gall. One is an ill-smelling shrub of the Southwestern desert region variously called Creosote-bush, Greasewood (one of many Greasewoods, by the way) and, by its Spanish names, Gobernadora and Hediondilla. Botanically, it is Larrea Mexicana, Moric., or, ac- cording to other nomenclaturists, Covillea tridentata, (DC.) Vail. It is distinguished by curious little evergreen leaves each consisting of two pointed, sticky leaflets, yellow 5-petaled flowers, the petals
202
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
set edgewise to the light, and round silky seed- vessels like fluffy white pellets. The branches are banded at intervals in black. It grows in the arid- est of soils, from Southern California eastward
CREOSOTE-BUSH (Larrea Mexicana)
across Arizona and southward into Mexico. An
antiseptic lotion may be made by steeping the twigs
and leaves in boiling hot water, effective in the
treatment of sores and wounds both of men and 203
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
animals.? The other plant referred to is Stachys Californica, Benth., called Mastransia by the Mexi- cans, with whom it is a standard remedy. It is a hairy herb of the Mint tribe, a foot or two high, with rather small, purple, 2-lipped flowers and some- what triangular leaves rather wrinkled in texture, the whole plant quite distinctively odorous. It is found up and down the Pacific Coast in various situations, and varies more or less accordingly in its characters. Mr. J. Smeaton Chase, who has used it with signal success for saddle galls, tells me that the green plant, freshly gathered, is customarily em- ployed. An infusion of stem and leaves is made by soaking them for a few minutes in boiling water. This is applied as a wash to wounds or sores. The soaked leaves may also be bound upon the parts as a poultice. Stachys is a genus of wide distribution in both hemispheres, and in England certain species long ago gained repute as remedial agents, under the suggestive common name Woundwort.
Patrons of quinine may find in our wild flora sub- stitutes by no means negligible, when their sup- ply of cinchona gives out. The most important are
2Mr. J. S. Chase, in his recent book “California Desert Trails,” states that a half inch or so of the stem of the Creosote-bush, peeled and held in the mouth like a pebble, is an Indian device for staving off thirst on desert journeys when water is scarce.
204
a . “ath * a
Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida, L.) The bark is used in making a medicine similar to quinine, and that of the root produces a red dye used by the Indians. (See page 225.)
(Courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardens.)
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
certain shrubs or small trees of the Dogwood family, which has representatives on both sides of the continent. One of these is the well-known Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida, L.), which beautifies spring woodlands with its showy white floral involucres from Canada to Florida and Texas. The bark is tonic, mildly stimulant and anti-inter- mittent, and many physicians have recognized its worth as a remedy in intermittent fevers, inferior only to Peruvian bark. A decoction is made of the dried bark of either the tree itself or the root, the latter being the stronger. (The fresh bark is said to be cathartic.) On the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to Southern California a kindred species is the Western Dogwood (Cornus Nuttallu, Aud.), which resembles in general appearance its eastern cousin. The bark is similarly useful. Townsend, in his journal of the Wyeth expedition to the Pacific Coast in the early days, tells of his curing two Oregon Indian children of fever-and-ague with this Dogwood, his supply of quinine being exhausted. He boiled the fresh bark in water and administered about a scruple a day. In three days his little patients were well. As he worked over the decoc- tion, the Indians crowded about him curiously; and ‘“‘T took pains,’’ he writes, ‘‘to explain the whole 205
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
matter to them, in order that they might at a future time be enabled to make use of a valuable medicine which grows abundantly everywhere throughout the country. ’’
Closely related to the Dogwoods is a genus of shrubs called by botanists Garrya. Several species are indigenous to our Far West. They are ever- green with inconspicuous flowers, which are of two sexes borne on separate individuals in drooping, tassel-like clusters or catkins. Garrya elliptica, Dougl., is a common shrub of the California chapar- ral, that has been considered ornamental enough to be introduced into gardens both in this country and abroad under the name ‘‘Silk-tassel bush.’’? Bark, leaves and fruit are exceedingly bitter. The in- herent principle seems to be the same as in the Dog- woods, and a decoction of bark or leaves has been similarly used for the relief of intermittent fevers. The shrub is known locally as Quinine-bush and Fever-bush.®
3A multitude of wild plants have at various times and in all parts of our country had a place in popular favor as remedies more or less efficacious for the bite of venomous serpents. They are usually called, in common speech, Rattlesnake-weed, Rattlesnake- root, Rattlesnake-master, or among the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest, Yerba de Vibora or Golondrina. Their real value, however, is so questionable that it seems hardly worth while to devote space here to their description.
206
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
Among Spanish Californians an herb of the Pacific Coast believed useful in fevers is Canchala- gua, or as the Americans call it Wild Quinine (Erythraea venusta, Gray). It is of the Gentian family, whose characteristic bitterness it possesses ; and is one of the most charming of western spring flowers, common on dry hillsides throughout much of California—the bright pink blossoms with a yel- low eye borne in terminal clusters upon plants a few inches to two feet high, with lance-shaped leaves in opposite pairs. Of the same family and some- what similar in appearance but with leaves clasping a quadrangular stem is the American Centaury (Sabbatia angularis, Pursh.), common on the Atlantic side of the continent from Canada to Florida. The dried herb is intensely bitter, and is popular among old-fashioned folk for its tonic properties.
One of the most interesting plants of the Pacific Coast is a beautiful evergreen forest tree, known variously as California Bay, California Laurel, Pepperwood and Oregon Myrtle (Umbellularia Cal- ifornica [H. & A.] Nutt.). It is a member of the Laurel family (to which the Sassafras, the Old World Bay and the Camphor-tree belong) and is characterized by a strong, pungent odor given off from the crushed leaves, somewhat suggesting bay
207
CaNCHALAGUA (Erythraea venusta)
208
SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS
rum. This peculiar aromatic quality of the leaf is diagnostic of the tree, but has the unpleasant effect of causing headache in some persons if inhaled too freely. The cause is a volatile oil resident in the leaf, which is popularly believed to be of medicinal value in several ways. A decoction of the fresh foliage is sometimes used as a disinfectant wash,* or, applied to the scalp, for headache. As a head- ache remedy, on the homeopathic principle, the Indians were accustomed to place a portion of a leaf in the nostril. A bath of hot water in which a quantity of the leaves has been thrown, followed by a thorough rubbing of the body, is a prescribed remedy for rheumatism said to have been efficacious in some cases. The aromatic vapor arising from the leaves boiling in water and allowed to circulate through the house was a preventive measure em- ployed with faith by some people upon the Pacific Coast during the recent Spanish Influenza epidemic. The leaves appear to be also valuable for driving
fleas away. 4Chesnut states that the oil of the leaf has an effect upon the skin comparable to that of camphor and menthol. I am indebted
to his monograph, already quoted, for some of the facts given in * this paragraph.
209
CHAPTER X
MISCELLANEOUS USES OF WILD PLANTS
O mickle is the powerful grace that lies In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities; For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give. Romeo and Juliet.
N the days before game laws came into being
within the limits of the United States, several -wild plants were employed for catching fish. I do not mean that they were used as bait, but in a very different way, long practised by the Indians. The. plants in question contain in their juices narcotic poisons, which, stirred into the water of ponds, deep pools or running streams temporarily dammed, con- taining fish, stupefy the latter without killing them, and cause them to float inert to the surface, where they may be easily gathered into baskets. No ill ef- fects appear to result from eating fish so poisoned, and in old times in California there was ample chance to test the matter, as both white men and red were
210
MISCELLANEOUS USES
prone to satisfy their appetite for fish in this manner. Such pot-hunting has now, however, for many years been forbidden by law. In California the bulbs of the Soap-plant (Chlorogalum pomeri- dianum, already described) were mostly used, being first crushed in quantity, thrown into the water, and mixed with it. Next to these in popularity were the macerated stems and leaves of the Turkey Mullein (Croton setigerus, Hook.), the Spanish-Califor- nians’ Yerba del pescado—that is, ‘‘fish-weed.’’ This plant is a rather low-spreading, bristly-hairy, grayish herb, with little greenish blossoms that are scarcely noticeable. It appears in the fields and plains of midsummer and remains through the autumn. Hunters of wild doves know it well, as these birds are very fond of the seeds and collect in numbers to feed where the ‘‘mullein’’ grows—to their undoing. Employed in the same way on the Atlantic seaboard were the seeds of the Southern or Red Buckeye (Aesculus Pavia, L.), a tree that occurs from Virginia to Florida and westward to the Mississippi Valley. According to Porcher, the fresh kernels were customarily macerated in water, mixed ‘with wheat-flour to form a stiff paste, and thrown into pools of standing water. The dazed fish would float up to the top and had then only to be picked 211
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
up. If placed in fresh water, they would soon re- vive.
When they wanted to, Indians knew quite well where to go for material for fishing lines and nets 4 —their knowledge of wild plants packed with useful fiber being rather extensive. One of the most widely distributed of these native fiber plants is the so-called Indian hemp (Apocy- num cannabinum, L.), an herbaceous peren- nial with a smooth, milky-juiced, woody
iene areas stem two to four feet (Apocynum cannabinum) high, and inconspicu- ous, greenish-white flowers producing very slender seed-pods about four inches long. It is found in thickets and dampish ground from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The usual preliminary preparation—as in the case of all the wild fiber-plants, I believe—was to rot the stems by soaking them in water. After that the outer
212
Inpran Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum)
213
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
bark readily separates and leaves exposed a soft, long, brownish fiber which is both strong and last- ing. At one time some of the aborigines wove this into articles of clothing, but the commoner use of it was in making fish- and carrying-nets, string and ropes. Peter Kalm speaks of the Swedes in the Delaware River colonies a century and a half ago preferring such ropes to those of common hemp, and bought them from their Indian neighbors at the astonishing rate of ‘‘fourteen yards for a piece of bread!”’
The Indians of the lower Colorado River obtained a fiber suitable for fishing lines and nets from a leguminous plant, Sesbania macrocarpa, Muhl., a tall annual, sometimes as much as twelve feet high, with pinnate leaves, yellowish, pea-like flowers purple- spotted, and very narrow, drooping seed-pods a foot long. It is commonly known as Wild Hemp, and grows in moist soil from South Carolina and Florida westward and along the Mexican border. On the Pacific Coast another plant of the Pea family that has entered into the weaving art of the Indians, is Psoralea macrostachya, DC., a cousin of the famous Prairie-potato mentioned in an earlier chapter. It is a stout, heavy-scented perennial, three to twelve feet high, with leaves consisting of three leaflets, and
214
MISCELLANEOUS USES
bearing in summer silky spikes of small, purplish flowers. Its favorite habitat is the borders of streams. Besides the inner bark, which is an excel- lent material for making coarse thread, the large root contains a valuable fiber. This the California Indians used to secure by pounding out the root. A pleasing feature of the fiber, whether of the root or the stem, is an aromatic perfume, which persists for months.’ Various species of Nettle, too, soaked in water, yield a fiber for cord making, as the Indians long since discovered. The Nettle, indeed, has been a primitive source of thread in both hemispheres; and Prior, in his ‘‘Popular Names of British Plants,’’ quotes an old writer as saying, ‘‘Scotch cloth is only the housewifery of the nettle.’’ Another fairly good fiber, utilizable for twine and rope, has been secured from several species of Asclepias, the familiar Milkweeds. Among these may be mentioned especially the Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata, L.), with smooth stem and foliage, and red or rose-purple flowers. It is a frequent denizen of swampy land throughout the eastern half of the country from Canada to the Gulf. In the same class is a well-known woolly Milkweed
1 Chesnut, “Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., Cali- fornia.”
215
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
of the Pacific Coast (A. eriocarpa, Benth.), char- acterized by cream-colored flowers and foliage clothed with a hoary hairiness. The commonest Milkweed of eastern fields and waste places, A. Syriaca, L., yields a fiber that has been used to some extent in paper making, and for weaving into muslins. In fact, the white man’s interest in all our wild fibers has been largely directed in latter times to their adaptability to adulterating and cheapening fabrics.”
The most important of all our native fiber plants are the Yuccas and Agaves. It is from Mexican species of the latter genus—and possibly of both genera—that the valuable Sisal-hemp, imported from Mexico, is made, with which our United States species have never successfully competed. Fiber from the Yucca (probably Y. baccata, Torr.) was in extensive use by the prehistoric people who built the cliff dwellings of the Southwest, as is proved by sandals, rope and cloth found in these remarkable ruins. According to the Zuii tradition it was from Yucca fibers that men made the first clothing for
2For many interesting details touching the general subject of wild fibers, reference is made to Reports 5 and 6, Office of Fiber In- vestigation, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, entitled respectively “Leaf Fiber of the United States,” and “Uncultivated Bast Fibers of the United States,” by C. H. Dodge.
216
MISCELLANEOUS USES
themselves when they emerged from the underworld (their first home) into this world of light. Though the spread -of white education among our aborigines has caused this ancient textile art to become almost a lost one, it is not entirely so. Here and there an old Indian is still run across who holds to the tradi- tions of the elders and works the ancient works. One such not long ago, living on the California desert, made me from the fiber of the Mescal plant (Agave desertt) a pair of sandals of immemorial pattern, the spongy sole an inch thick turned up at the heel, and with an elaborate arrangement of cords to keep the foot in place.
Both Agave and Yucca are treated in the same manner to separate the fiber. After soaking the leaves in water to soften them, they are pounded and repeatedly rinsed until the pulpy part is dis- posed of. The fibers are then combed out, twisted into strands, and woven as desired. According to Dr. Palmer, the old-time Southern California weavers were famous for their Yucca fiber ropes, nets, hairbrushes and saddle blankets. In the last a padding of softer fiber obtained from the quiote (Yucca Whipplei) was employed to relieve the harshness of the Yucca baccata fiber. The tough
3The American Naturalist, Sept., 1878. 217
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
epidermis of Yucca leaves, split into narrow strips, makes a coarse basket material, serviceable more- over as a cord substitute for tying and jacketing articles to be hung up, as hams and watermelons. In the East the same may be done with the strong, fibrous bark of the Moose-wood or Leather-wood (Dirca palustris, L.), the bois de plomb of the French-Canadians. It is a deciduous shrub, two to six feet high, much branched and characterized by a tough bark, suggesting leather in its pliability, the pale greenish flowers preceding the leaves in small terminal fascicles in early spring. Damp woodlands are its favorite home, from Canada to the Gulf and eastward from the Mississippi to the Atlantic.
A good string may also be made by twisting the fiber obtained from the common Reed-grass (Phrag- mites communis, Trin.),—the Carrizo of the South- west,—whose tall, straight canes crowned with silky, plume-like floral panicles, form a conspicuous feature in swamps and damp places throughout the United States and Canada. At a distance they present the general appearance of Broom-corn. A peculiarity of this reed that excited the curiosity of observant explorers half a century or so ago, was utilized by some of the Indian tribes to minister to their taste for sugar. Owing to the attacks of
218
MISCELLANEOUS USES
a certain insect, which punctures the leafage, a pasty exudation is often to be found in abundance upon the plants. This, upon hardening into a gum, may be collected, and has a sweet, licorice-like taste. Palmer records a former practice of the Indians to cut the canes when the gum was sufficiently hardened, lay them in bundles upon blankets, and shake off the sweet particles. The sugar thus obtained was usually consumed by stirring it in water, making thus a sweet and nutritious drink. Coville speaks of a somewhat different practice with the same plant by the Panamint Indians of the Mojave Desert, who would dry the entire reed, grind it and sift out the flour. This, which would be moist and sticky from the inherent sugar, would then be set near a fire until it would swell and brown, when it would be eaten like taffy.*
Another primitive sort of sugar harvest may be reaped in a small way from the common Milkweed (Asclepias Syriaca). Kalm, among others, has noted this. The process as observed by him was to gather the flowers in the morning while the dew was on them. The dew, expressed and _ boiled, yielded a palatable brown sugar. Such a dainty sort of manufacture seems fitting enough in fairy
4The American Anthropologist, Oct., 1892, 219
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
economics; but it is hard to believe it to have been of much practical value among the rough pioneers from whom the old Swedish traveler learned of it. The Sugar Pine (Pinus Lambertiana, Dougl.), that noblest of Pacific Coast pines, owes its common name to a sugary exudation from the heart-wood when the tree has been cut into with an ax or been damaged by fire. The bleeding sap forms irregular lumps and nuggets, white when fresh and unstained, but more often found brown from exposure and contact with fire. John Muir thought this sugar the best of sweets. As to that, each must be his own judge; but it certainly has an appeal to many. Moderation should be exercised in its consumption, as it has a decided laxative tendency. Of all ‘‘wild sugars,’’ however, the sap of the Sugar Maple, the source of commercial maple sugar, is without a peer. It is too well known to call for more than mention here.
Our wild plants that have been experimented upon for dyes by the color-loving Indians are very numerous. The subject is too technical for me to say just what value these various vegetable dyes may have in the arts of civilization, but I may refer briefly to a few.
Imprimis, there is. that familiar hedge-plant, the
; 220
MISCELLANEOUS USES
Osage Orange (Maclura aurantiaca, Nutt.). Its native home is in the rich bottom-lands of a com- paratively narrow strip of territory extending from eastern Kansas and Missouri through Arkansas to Texas, attaining in all that region arboreal propor- tions. It is distinguished by its curious, yellowish- green, rough-skinned, milky, but inedible fruits, somewhat resembling half-ripe oranges. The large roots and the heartwood of the tree are bright orange in color, and from the former has been extracted a yellow dyestuff, which has been pronounced com- parable in excellence to fustic, the product of an allied tree of the tropics, The elastic, satiny wood was a favorite material for bows among the Indians,® and the tree came to be known accordingly by the French-Louisianians as Bois d’arc. A curious use of the milky juice of the ‘‘oranges’’ is recorded by Dr. James of the Long expedition, the members of which resorted to smearing themselves with it as a protection from the torment of wood-ticks.
From Kentucky to North Carolina, the beautiful Kentucky Yellow-wood (Cladastris tunctoria, Raf.) is indigenous, a smooth-barked tree with pinnate
5“The price of a bow made from this wood, at the Aricaras’, is a horse and blanket.” John Bradbury’s “Travels in the Interior of America.’”? 1809-11. But the Aricaras lived a thousand miles from where the Osage Orange grows.
221
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
leaves and showy panicles of fragrant, white, pea- like blossoms, pendent in June from the branch ends. It, too, has yellow wood, as the common name im- plies, and from it a clear saffron dye may be had. Better known is the Quercitron or Dyer’s Oak (Bartram’s Quercus tinctoria), which has played a part in international commerce. The inner bark, which is orange-colored, yields a fine yellow dye, and was once an important article of export to Europe, where it was employed in the printing of calicos. The tree is indigenous in poor soil throughout a large part of the eastern United States, and by some bot- anists is regarded as but a variety of the Scarlet Oak (Quercus coccinea, Wang.), whose foliage is a fiery contributor to the autumn coloring of our forests.
- Nature’s fondness for yellow is manifested in her gift of many dyes of this cheerful color, utilized by her red children. The common Wild Sunflower (Helianthus annuus, L.) and the flower heads of the rank-smelling Rabbit-brush (Chrysothamnus nause- osus [Pursh.] Britt.)—this latter one the commonest shrubs of the Far Western plains and deserts, with rayless flat-topped clusters of yellow flowers and with linear leaves—have long yielded a yellow stain to the Indians, who transmute the gold of the blos- soms into liquidity by the process of boiling. An-
222
MISCELLANEOUS USES
other mine of color is Shrub-yellow-root (Xanthor- rhiza apiifolia, L.Her.), a low, shrubby plant of the Buttercup family, with pinnate leaves clustered at the top of a short stem, and small, brownish-yellow flowers in drooping, slender racemes appearing in April or May, in woods and on shady banks of mountain streams from New York to Florida. The bark and roots are richly yellow, and from the latter the dye was customarily extracted. The bark and roots, too, of some of the Barberries (notably the western Berberis Fremontii, Torr.) yield a yellow dye, of which the Navajos used to be fond as a color for their buckskins. Equally in aboriginal favor as a source of yellow was the nearly related Golden Seal (Hydrastis Canadensis, L.), the thick, orange- colored rootstock being used. It occurs in rich woods from the Canadian border to Arkansas and’ Georgia—a low herb, with a hairy stem two-leaved near the summit which bears a single, greenish-white flower. It is sometimes called Yellow Puccoon.® Puccoon is a word of Indian origin, and has been applied to other plants as well. One of these, the Red Puccoon, is more commonly known as Blood- root (Sanguinaria Canadensis, L.), whose hand-
6The root is also the source of the official drug Golden seal, and its collection on this account has caused the plant to become exterminated in many localities where it was once common,
223
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
some, white flowers are among the best beloved of the woodland posies of spring, from Manitoba to Florida. The whole plant is charged with a bitter juice of a reddish- orange color, and that of the root- stock was used by the Indians to pro- duce a bright red coloring matter with which they painted their bod- ies, and also col- ored articles of native manufac- ture, particularly baskets. An- other Puccoon is Inthospermum ca- nescens, Lehm., of the botanists. It ‘Durlanaw is a rough-hairy
(Lithospernum canescens) herb of the Bo-
rage family common on the plains of the West, bear- ing rather large, salver-shaped orange-yellow flow- ers clustered at the summit of foot-high stems—
224
(‘suspspy yorunjog x40 x Mtan ay} fo fsajunoy) ‘skp por qYyBIIq e& JO d0IN0S ay} se 3qq enjea ‘(sisuappun) Dupumbuos) jOo1-poopg
MISCELLANEOUS USES
several from the same root. This, I believe, was the most famous of the Puccoons as an Indian color- source, a good red dye being extractable from the large red roots. The plant sometimes went among the whites by the name of Alkanet, bestowed, doubt- less, because of its cousinship with the plant yield- ing the famous Old World dye so ‘entitled. The Borage family, indeed, are rather rich in color juices, and some will stain the fingers even as one gathers the flowers. A red dye was also got, according to Porcher, from the fibrous roots of the Flowering Dogwood and the kindred Silky Cornel (Cornus sericea, L.) sometimes called Kinnikinnik. Of Kin- nikinnik, more in a-page or two. Another red may be extracted from the roots of the Wild Madder (Galium tinctorium, L.), a smooth-stemmed, peren- nial Bedstraw, with square stems and rather upright branches, narrow leaves in verticels usually of four, and small, 4-parted, white flowers, found in damp shade and in swampy land from Canada southward throughout much of the eastern United States. This was one of the dyes used by the northern Indians to color red the porcupine quills, which en- tered so largely into their decorations; and French- Canadian women, according to Kalm, employed it under the name of tisavo jaune-rouge, to dye cloth. AE 225
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
A dark blue dye Peter Kalm found in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists, derived from the Red or Swamp Maple (Acer rubrum, L.), that charming
a “ oe bi Hab
SE) 1
KINNIKINNIK (Cornus sericea)
tree whose vivid blossoms, appearing before the
leaves, add so much of glory to the early spring
landscapes of our Atlantic seaboard. The bark, says 226
MISCELLANEOUS USES
Kalm, is first boiled in water and before the stuff to be dyed is put into the boiler, ‘‘some copperas such as hatmakers and shoemakers use,’’ is added. The extraction of a dark brown dye from the inner bark and the nut-rinds of the Butternut or White Walnut (Juglans cinerea, L.) is an old practice among country-folk, and in former times was a com- mon method of coloring homespun woollen cloth- ing. Civil War veterans will not yet have forgotten the butternut garments in which so many of the Con- federates were clad that the term butternut became a synonym for a soldier of the South. The various species of Alnus or Alder, familiar shrubs (and, on the Pacific Coast, trees), contain in the bark a dye principle of value. This, in some cases, colors a brownish yellow, in others an orange. With cop- peras a good black may be had. Before the Indians began to use the traders’ colors, alder dye was in gen- eral use among some tribes, and in the old days many an alder bush met its death through stripping by artist-squaws bent on color-getting. The bark, peeled preferably in the spring, was boiled either fresh or dried, until the water became thoroughly colored, when it was ready to receive the article
to be treated. 227
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
A good Indian black has been got from the mal- odorous Rocky Mountain Bee-plant or Pink Spider- flower (Cleome serrulata, Pursh.), familiar to every traveler on our western plains, and conspicuous for its showy racemes of pink, long-stamened flowers, mingled with long-stalked, slender, outstretched seed- pods. Certain of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico (where the plant is known among the Spanish-speaking population as guaco) have habitu- ally relied upon it for the black decoration of their pottery. The plants are collected in summer, boiled down thoroughly, and the thick, black, residual fluid then allowed to dry and harden in cakes. Pieces of this are soaked in hot water, when needed for paint.7. The desert Indians of Southern California used to obtain a yellowish-brown dye for coloring deerskins and other material from a shrubby plant of the Pea tribe, Dalea Emoryi, Gray, bearing small, terminal clusters of tiny pea-like flowers, staining the fingers when pinched and exhaling an odd but pleasant fragrance. The branchlets were steeped in water to release the color. Another desert dye, but black, may be had by soaking the stems of Sueda suffrutescens, Wats., a somewhat woody plant of the Salt-bush family, with small, dark green, fleshy
7 Harrington, “Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians.”
228
MISCELLANEOUS USES
leaves, found in alkaline ground from California to New Mexico.
People who have an aversion to Lady Nicotine may be interested in certain plants useful to weaken the effect of tobacco or to act as a substitute. Be- fore the coming of the white man, the Indian smoked principally as a religious rite, as an offering of re- spect to superiors, or to cure disease. It was re- served for the white man to make of the practice a purely pleasurable indulgence. Moreover, the smoking material of pre-Columbian days within the territory of the present United States, was quite different from Twentieth Century commercial tobacco. There are several indigenous species of Nicotiana, which the aboriginal inhabitants dried and utilized, and in some instances cultivated. Their customary ‘‘smoke,’’ however, was not pure tobacco, but a combination with other material; and this brings us again to Kinnikinnik, mentioned a little while ago. This. word is an Algonkian-Indian expression signifying a mixture, and was applied by the plainsmen, trappers and settlers in the Fur Trade days to a preparation of tobacco with the dried leaves or bark of certain plants. Afterwards it came to be given to the plants themselves, the most important of which are these:
229
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
The ‘Silky Cornel (Cornus sericea, L.) a shrub of wet situations, with purplish branches—these and the underleaf surfaces silky with hairs—and flattish clusters of small white flowers in early summer, suc- ceeded in autumn by pale blue berries;
The Red-osier Dogwood (Cornus stoloni- fera, Michx.), somewhat similar to the above, but less hairy and fewer-flowered, the berries whitish, the branches smooth and brightly reddish, the plant spreading by running suckers;
The Bear-berry (Arctostaphylos Uva- urst, Spreng.), a trailing, evergreen vine, with little, urn-shaped, white flowers in spring, and crimson, dryish, astringent ber- ries in autumn, affecting rocky or sandy soil;
The Sumac, especially Rhus glabra, L., with smooth, pinnate leaves and smooth twigs.
In the case of the first two plants, the scraped, inner bark was the part availed of; in that of the last two, the leaves. The foliage also of Manzanita and Arrow-wood (species of Viburnum) sometimes
230
MISCELLANEOUS USES
found favor. The ingredients of the ‘‘smoke’’ were first thoroughly dried either in the sun or over a fire, and then rubbed and crumbled between the palm of the hand—whence the French engagés’ name, bois roulé, applied to such smoking material. Though a portion of tobacco was usual in the make- up, it frequently was omitted—one or more of the non-narcotics being consumed alone.
When our attention is once turned to utilizing what is growing freely around us, an almost exhaustless subject of remarkable fascination has been started; and the folk of simple habits and gifted with some ingenuity find Flora a ministrant goddess of very varied gifts. There is almost nothing we can ask of her that she cannot make some sort of response to. Lovers of the curious may have napkin rings or candle-sticks from sections of the reticulated wooden skeleton of the savage Cholla Cactus; com- bination brushes for sweeping the floor or brushing the hair (according to the end used) from certain western grasses; *® combs of pine-cones; buttons of acorn-cups; tooth-brushes of the Flowering Dog-
8 One, given me by a Zufi Indian, is a simple bunch of Muhlen- bergia pungens, Thurb., tied about with a string, the butt-end charred to serve for the hairbrush, the other doing duty as a whisk. Harrington states that among the Tewa of New Mexico and Arizona, the plant used for this double purpose is the Mesquite- grass (Bouteloua curtipendula, Torr.).
231
USEFUL WILD PLANTS wood’s peeled twigs, highly recommended in old times for their whitening effect when rubbed upon the teeth.
Certain plants may even be made to yield salt, by being burned to ashes. One such is the Sweet Colts- foot (Petasites palmata, Gray), a perennial herb of the Composite tribe, having large, rounded, deeply fingered leaves, all basal, white-woolly beneath and from six to ten inches broad when full grown, the whitish, fragrant flower-heads tubular or short rayed and clustered at the top of a stout, scaly stalk. The plant frequents swamps and stream borders from Massachusetts to California and far north- ward throughout Canada. To some Indian tribes, the ash of the Sweet Coltsfoot was their only salt. Chesnut states that the method of preparation ob- served by him was to roll the green leaves and stems into balls, carefully dry them, and then burn them upon a very small fire on a rock, until consumed.
Then there are adhesives. Pine pitch naturally suggests itself for this purpose; but one of the best cements for mending broken articles may be obtained from the branches of the despised Creosote bush of the Southwestern deserts (Larrea Memicana, already described). This gum is not a direct vegetable exudation, but is deposited by a tiny, parasitic scale-
232
Sweet CoLTsroor (Petasites palmata)
233
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
insect in small reddish masses upon the twig-bark, from which it is readly scraped. The Panamint Indians, to quote Coville, improve its effectiveness by mixing with it pulverized rock, and pounding all together. The product is warmed before applying.
A word about candles, and this rambling chapter may close. A common source of wax for candle- making in old times, and still not altogether for- gotten, is a shrub or small tree indigenous from Nova Scotia to Florida and Alabama, with resinous, fragrant leaves, and bluish-white, waxen berries, strung upon the branches and persisting through the winter. Modern botanists make of the plants two species—Myrica cerifera, L., and M. Carolinensis, Mill. They are called rather indiscriminately in common speech, Waxberry, Bayberry, or Candle- berry. The little round berries may be gathered in the autumn, boiled in a pot of water, and the wax, which floats to the surface, skimmed off. This hard- ens into a cloudy green mass, which, Peter Kalm tells us, it was customary in his day to melt over again and refine into a transparent green. Candles were moulded from this, either pure or mixed with some common tallow. Bayberry wax burns with a rather pleasant fragrance, and perhaps you have found such candles among your Christmas gifts.
234
CANDLEBERRY (Myrica Carolinensis)
235
CHAPTER XI
A CAUTIONARY CHAPTER ON CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
“‘Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence.”
HERE is an old saying about mushrooms to the effect that the way to test their edibility is to eat a few; if you survive, they are a harmless kind; if you die, they are poisonous. The same cynic rule applies to wild plants in general, though with much greater chance for survival than is af- forded by the fungus group, since the number of poisonous flowering plants growing wild in the United States is relatively small. Nevertheless there are some of such common distribution that a brief reference to a few of these that might deceive the unwary seems desirable.? Perhaps the plant responsible for most fatalities
1A useful monograph, adequately illustrated, entitled “Thirty Poisonous Plants of the United States,” by V. K. Chesnut, was issued a number of years ago by the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, as Farmers’ Bulletin No. 86. I believe it is now out of print, but copies may be found in public libraries,
236
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
is that common toadstool appropriately called Death- cup (Amanita phalloides), whose resemblance to the edible Agaric or Field Mushroom (Agaricus cam- pestris) causes it to be mistaken for the latter by the
(Amanita phalloides)
ignorant. Any one who has not had practical instruc- tion in differentiating edible fungi from poisonous, would best leave the fungus order religiously alone. Mushroom gathering is a business for experts.
237
iy Te “y? Ye Sy Ms,
Ls gp, SE ele
Water HEMLOCK (Cicuta maculata)
238
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
A tribe of flowering plants that includes some very dangerous members and needs to be treated with caution, is the Parsley Family—the scientists’ Umbelliferae. To this order belongs the Water Hemlock or Cowbane (Cicuta maculata, 'L.), a peren- nial of marshy grounds and stream borders from the Atlantic coast westward to the confines of the Rocky Mountains. It grows from three to six feet high, with stout, erect stems blotched or streaked longi- tudinally with purple, and ample, compound leaves the segments of which are usually two to three inches long, lance-shaped and toothed. A peculiarity of the foliage is the veining—the veins apparently ending within the notches instead of extending to the tips of the teeth. The small white flowers, appearing in summer, are borne at the branch end in compound, long-stalked umbels, after the manner of parsley blossoms. All parts of the plant are poisonous if eaten, producing nausea and convulsions, the fleshy, tuberous roots being especially harmful. These are said to possess an agreeable, aromatic taste, and as they are often found exposed through the wearing away of the surrounding earth in freshets, they con- stitute a menace to inquisitive children and browsing cattle. Death results from eating them. On the Pacific coast two or three species of Water Hemlock
239
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
occur, also inhabiting marshy places, and all are possessed of the same deadly properties.
The famous Poison Hemlock of Greek history and Macbeth’s witches (Conium maculatum, L.)—the basis of the death potion of Socrates—is also a mem- ber of the Parsley family, native to Europe and Asia but now extensively naturalized in the United States in waste grounds on both sides of the continent. It is a smooth, hollow-stemmed, much branched, bluish- green biennial, sometimes as high as a tall man, but usually much lower, with large, coarsely dissected leaves, the leaf-stalks dilated at the base and sheath- ing. The stems are often spotted with dark purple. The small white flowers appear in June in compound, many-rayed umbels. The poisonous principle—an alkaloid called conia or conine—is permanently resi- dent in the seeds and only temporarily in other parts of the plant. According to Chesnut, the root. is nearly harmless in March, but dangerous if consumed afterwards, and the leaves become poisonous at the time of flowering. The effect of the poison is a general paralysis of the system until death. A drug, conium, prepared from the plant, is a powerful seda- tive and has been used medicinally as a substitute for opium.’
2Qne wonders why hemlock, which we associate with a forest
240
Butternut (Juglans cinerea). The bark is the source of a dye used for the uniforms of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. (See page 227.)
(Courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardens.)
‘ Sanne
' "4 ai) Wy TO oOFaY, ea
i (OZ UG, Wd)
Nay RpSAN ae a
>
Se Sarre
Porson HemMLock (Conium, maculatum)
Itty
241
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Noxious berries that sometimes tempt children to their sorrow are those of the Moonseed (Menisper- mum Canadense, L.), so called because of the curi- ous seeds, which are shaped like a crescent or horse- shoe. This is a climbing perennial vine of fence rows and waterside thickets, indigenous from Canada to Arkansas and Georgia. The large leaves are rather wider than long with a somewhat heartshaped base. The small greenish flowers are scarcely no- ticeable, but the vine attracts attention in autumn because of its conspicuous bunches of berries, bluish- black with a bloom, which look so much like chicken grapes that the novice may mistake them for these. Stories of poisoning from eating wild grapes some- times get into the newspapers, and are traceable to the Moonseed, whose berries are poisonous-narcotic, a character of the family to which the vine belongs. The clustered, black berries of the common Night- shade (Solanum nigrum, L.), a naturalized weed of waste places everywhere, are also a tempting sight, but had better be avoided; for while they are doubt- less harmless when thoroughly ripe (I have myself tree, should be applied to an herb. According to Prior in “Popu- lar Names of British Plants,” the term was originally given in Eng- land to any of the Umbelliferae—the word being degenerate Anglo-
Saxon meaning “straw plant,” because of the dry, hollow stalks that remain after flowering.
242
MooNsEED (Menispermum Canadense)
243
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
tremblingly eaten them in moderation), they are said on good authority to be poisonous when not ripe, and color is not a sure guarantee that the state of safety has been attained.
So, too, the crimson berries of the familiar Poke- weed, Pigeon-berry or Garget (Phytolacca decandra, L.) should be kept out of the mouth, in spite of the fact that birds devour them with greediness. The whole plant is imbued with an active principle that induces vomiting and purging, and in the root this is so virulent that it has been known to cause death. As mentioned in a previous chapter, when preparing the young shoots as potherbs two waters should be used, that in which they are first boiled being thrown away. Another familiar weed, the Corn Cockle (Agrostemma Githago, L.), a purple flowered, hairy foreigner occurring in our grain fields, harbors within its seeds a rank poison. Flour in which a large quantity of these seeds has been ground may produce fatal results. Cockle seeds, by the way, are saponaceous and will create a lather if shaken up well in water.
On the Pacific slope, in the country of the Camas described in Chapter II, is a plant of the Lily tribe in general appearance resembling Camas but with a bulb that is poisonous. It is realistically known as
244
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
Death Camas, and also as White Camas and Lobelia. It haunts damp meadows and streamsides, and is in botanical parlance Zygadenus venenosus, Wats. The white flowers serve to distinguish it from the blue Camas, which otherwise it strongly simulates. The effect of eating the Zygadenus bulb is a pro- found nausea accompanied by vomiting. Mr. F. V. Coville records a crafty practice of the Klamath medicine men, who would sometimes make a mixture of tobacco, dried iris root and Death Camas, and give it to a person in order to nauseate him. Then they would charge the victim a fee to make him well again!
A poison unsuspected by most of us resides in the leaves of that beautiful evergreen shrub, the Ameri- can Laurel or Calico-bush (Kalmia latifolia, L.), which glorifies with its white and pink bloom the spring thickets of the Atlantic seaboard. Man has little occasion to put these leaves in his mouth, but the ill effect upon cattle and sheep has been often reported. A like offender is the Laurel’s little red- flowered cousin, the Sheep-Laurel or Lambkill (K. angustifolia, L.). Stock may also suffer fatally from eating the wilted foliage of the Wild Black Cherry (Prunus serotina, a tree already described, with clusters of edible, small, black, somewhat
245
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
astringent fruit). The most dreaded of cattle- poisons, however, particularly on the Western ranges, is probably the so-called Loco-weed, a term applied to several species of Astragalus—especially A, mollissimus, Torr., distinguished by purple flow- ers and densely hairy foliage. The genus is of the
hom ay
seg un WY
CANS
: el ! x Sale Pom Looo-wEED (Astragalus mollissimus)
246
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
Pea family, and is a very large one, widely dis- tributed. There are nearly two hundred American species, mostly western—herbaceous plants with odd- pinnate leaves, spikes or racemes of ‘usually small, narrow flowers generally produced from the leaf- axils, the seed pods mostly bladdery or swollen. These, when dry, have a habit of rustling noticeably in a passing breeze, whence another common name, Rattleweed. Astragalus is often abundant where horses and cattle graze, and certain species have been found to create serious trouble with animals that eat the herbage. They become afflicted with a sort of insanity, or as the Westerners say, they are “‘locoed,’’? the victims of a slow poisoning. The eyesight grows defective, the movements are spas- modic and irrational, then sluggish and feeble, the coat becomes disheveled and dull of color, emacia- tion sets in, and finally after a few months or it may be a year or two, death comes. It was at one time thought that the potsoning was not of the plant itself but due to the presence of the metal barium which the plant drew into its system from the soil, but this theory is now abandoned.
A dangerously poisonous weed is the Jimson or Thorn-apple (Datura Stramonium, L.), whose large
8 Spanish loco, crazy, foolish. 247
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
funnel-shaped, white or violet flowers and thorny seed-vessels adorning ill-smelling, branching plants,
JIMSON-WEED (Datura Stramonium)
are familiar sights in fields and waste grounds from
the Mississippi eastward and from Canada to the
Gulf. The whole plant and particularly the seeds 248
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
are possessed of a virulent narcotic poison, which taken into the human body produces vertigo, nausea, delirium and a general anarchy of the nervous sys- tem. In that quaint old work, ‘‘ History and Present State of Virginia’? (1705), by Robert Beverly, the author gives a curious account of what happened to some soldiers who made a boiled dish of the early shoots of the plant, supposing them to be edible pot- herbs. ‘‘Some of them eat plentifully of it,’’ writes Master Beverly, ‘‘the Effect of which was a very pleasant Comedy; for they turn’d natural Fools upon it for several Days: One would blow up a Feather in the Air; another would dart Straws at it with much Fury; another, stark naked, was sitting in a Corner, like a Monkey, grinning and making mows at them; a Fourth would fondly kiss and paw his Companions and snear in their Faces with a Coun- tenance more antick than any Dutch Droll....A thousand such simple Tricks they play’d, and after Eleven Days, return’d to themselves again, not re- membering anything that had pass’d.’’*
There are several species of Datura indigenous within our limits, all resembling one another in gen- eral look and all poisonous. On the Pacific Slope,
4 Beverly calls the plant James Town weed, which seems to have been the original term, now corrupted to Jimson,
249
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
the commonest species is D. meteloides, DC., called toloache by Mexicans and Indians. This, like sev- eral species of Spanish America, has played a note- worthy part in the ceremonial life of our aborigines. An infusion of the plant was customarily adminis- tered in certain rites, as those of puberty; and it. was a drug commonly resorted to by medicine. men to induce a hypnotic state or a condition evocative of prophecy. Only a little while ago a California Indian expressed to me his faith in the power of toloache to unravel mysteries and reveal the where- abouts of lost animals. The likelihood of death from overindulgence makes its employment risky, and it is nowadays comparatively neglected. Among the New Mexico Zufiis, the blossom of this Datura is a sacred flower, and a representation of it figures as an adornment of the women in some of their dances. Mrs. Stevenson in her ‘‘Ethnobotany of the Zufi Indians,’’* records a legend about this flower worthy of Ovid. It seems that long, long ago while the Zuiis still dwelt in the underworld, a boy and a girl, brother and sister, found a way up into this world of light, and would take long walks upon the earth, wearing upon their heads Datura flowers. And so they: learned many wonderful things, and had many
530th Ann. Rept. Bureau of American Ethnology. 250
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
interesting adventures. One day they met the Divine Ones, the Twin Sons of the Sun Father, to whom, child-like, they prattled of what they had found out—how they could make people sleep and see ghosts, and how they could make others walk about and see who it was that had stolen something. Thereupon the Divine Ones decided that this little couple knew altogether too much, and should be made away with. So they caused the brother and sister to disappear into the earth forever; and where they sank down flowers sprang up, the counter- part of those that the children had worn upon their heads. The gods called the flowers by the name of the boy, Aneglakya; and by that term the Zuiiis know them to this day, for the flowers had many children and we find them throughout the land.
In western Texas and southern New Mexico, rang- ing across the frontier down into Old Mexico, there grows a handsome shrub of the Pea family, with glossy, odd-pinnate, evergreen leaves of leathery texture, and one sided racemes of papilionaceous, violet-colored flowers, succeeded by long pods that contain about half a dozen large scarlet bean-like seeds apiece. This is the Red Bean, Mescal Bean, or as the Spanish-speaking population call it, Fri- jolillo, which means the ‘‘little pink bean.’’ To
251
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
botanists it is Broussonetia secundiflora, Ort., or Sophora secundiflora, Lag. The seeds contain a narcotic poison that makes them dangerous particu- larly to children, who are likely to be attracted by the brilliant color. The crushed seeds have been used from very early times by the Indians, who, it is reported, could make themselves deliriously drunk on half a bean, and sleep two or three days on top of it, while a whole bean would killa man. Among some tribes, as the Iowas, there were religious rites connected with the Red Bean, and a society was founded upon it.
To-day one hears little of the Red Bean Society, but the cult of another dangerous vegetable poison of the Southwest is still active. This is the so-called Sacred Mushroom, Mescal-button, Dry Whisky, Peyote, or Raiz diabélica (devil’s root)—names given in common speech to a small cactus, Lopho- phora Williamsii, whose use has become a rather desolating factor among the present-day Reservation Indians of the United States. Some of these, it ap- pears, maintain a regularly organized association called the Sacred Peyote Society with a form of baptism ‘‘in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Ghost,’’ the Holy Ghost being Peyote! ®
6 Quoted by W. E. Safford, “Narcotic Plants and Stimulants of 202
(‘pSt o8ed 20g) “Buryeur joyseq 10f (vypqo;m4y snyy) poeM-menbs Sursedoerd uewom uerpuy
=
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
The cactus is indigenous to the arid regions border- ing on the lower Rio Grande both in the United States and Mexico. It ;
resembles a carrot in shape, and the entire plant, except about an inch at the top, grows underground. This top ig flat and round, two to three inches across, and wrinkled with radiating ribs. There are no spines but numerous tufts of silky hairs, amid which pink blossoms are borne in season. The chemical properties em- brace three alkaloids whose effect is -power- fully narcotic and delir- iant, in some respects re- sembling opium. Lum- holtz, in his ‘‘Unknown
ere: : MESCAL-BUTTON Mexico,’’ gives an inter- (Lophophora Williamsii)
the Ancient Americans,” in Ann. Rept. Smithsonian Institution, 1916.
253
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
esting account of the superstitious reverence ac- corded by the Tarahumar Indians of Chihuahua to- wards this plant, which in their language is called hikuli. They treat it as a divinity and Lumholtz was required to lift his hat in the presence of the dried ‘‘buttons.’’? Catholicized Tarahumares make the sign of the cross before it; and it is regarded as a safeguard against witches and ill fortune. It is claimed that its use takes away the craving for alcohol, which may be true; but it substitutes an- other, and, between Scylla and Charybdis, what is the choice?
The poisonous effect of a few native species of Rhus upon the skin of many persons is well known. On the Atlantic slope the species whose caustic juices possess this property are the Swamp Sumac (Rhus venenata, DC.) and the Poison Ivy (R. Toxi- codendron, L.). The former is a graceful shrub or small tree of swampy situations, the smooth leaves compound with leaflets abruptly pointed and with entire margins. They turn in the autumn a brilliant red, very seductive to the gatherers of autumn foli- age. The panicles of greenish flowers, produced from the axils of the leaves, are followed by grayish white berries. The plant is also called Poison Sumac and, less correctly, Poison Elder. The
254
fii, 4 ge
Swamp Sumac (Rhus venenata)
255
USEFUL WILD PLANTS
Poison Ivy is very variable in habit, either a low, upright bush, or a vine climbing by aérial rootlets
Poison Ivy (Rhus Toxicodendron)
over fences and far up into the crowns of trees.” It has leaves of three short-stalked leaflets, and
7 Some botanists prefer to treat Poison Ivy as of two species—the climber being designated Rhus radicane.
206
CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS
flowers and fruit like those of the Swamp Sumac. This 3-leaflet arrangement serves to distinguish the plant from the harmless but somewhat similar look- ing Virginia Creeper or American Ivy, which has leaves of five parts. On the Pacific Slope, the rep- resentative poisonous Rhus is R. diversiloba, T. & G., commonly called Poison Oak. It is in general appearance like the eastern Poison Ivy, either bushy or climbing, but the leaflets are variously lobed and toothed, suggesting an oak. Among popular reme- dies in California for Rhus poisoning is a strong decoction made by boiling the leaves of the Man- zanita, applied hot and repeatedly to the affected parts. The historian Bancroft records that a Spanish expedition in the Southwest early in the eighteenth century, under Governor Valverde, suf- fered greatly from Poison Oak and found relief by chewing chocolate and applying the saliva to the eruption. Rather a pleasing remedy, on the whole, one’ would fancy; and I am glad to think of those old campaigners in the desert having that little taste of sweet in the bitterness of their lot.
257
REGIONAL INDEX
(For Page Numbers see General Index.)
The notation (A) after a plant indicates that it is found only in the Atlantic States. The notation (W) after a plant indicates that it is found only west of the Atlantic States.
East or tHE Rocxy Movuntarns (including Middle and Hastern Canada)
Foop Puants:
Edible Roots and Tubers:
Arrowhead (Sagittaria variabilis)
Chufa (Cyperus esculenta)
Golden Club (Orontium aquaticum) a Groundnut (Apios tuberosa)
Indian Bread-root (Psoralea esculenta) w. Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) w Man-of-the-earth (Ipomoea pandurata) Spring Beauty (Claytonia Virginica) Virginia Tuckaho (Peltandra Virginica) Water Chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea)
Wild Onion (Allium trieoccum)
Edible Seeds:
Beechnut (Fagus Americana) Chestnut (Castanea dentata) Chinquapin (Castanea pumila) Golden Club (Orontium aquaticum) Groundnut (Apios tuberosa) Hickory (Hicoria sp.)
259
REGIONAL INDEX
Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica) Sunflower (Helianthus annuus sp.) w Walnut (Juglans sp.)
Water Chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea) Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica)
Edible Fruits and Berries:
Barberry (Berberis sp.)
_—~ Blackberry (Rubus sp.) Buffalo-berry (Shepherdia argentea) w Cranberry (Oxyeoceus sp.)
- Currant (Ribes sp.)
Gooseberry (Ribes sp.)
Grape (Vitis sp.)
Ground Cherry (Physalis sp.) Hawthorn (Crataegus sp.) Huckleberry (Vaccinium sp.)
May Apple (Podophyllum peltatum) Mulberry (Morus rubra)
Papaw (Asimina triloba) Persimmon (Diospyros Virginica)“
_ Raspberry (Rubus sp.) Service-berry (Amelanchier sp.) Strawberry (Fragaria sp.)
_- Teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens)
Edible Stems or Leaves:
Bracken (Pteris aquilina)
Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) Dock (Rumex crispus)
Lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album) Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) i Nettle (Urtica dioica)
Pokeweed (Phytolacea decandra) Purslane (Portulaca oleracea): Water-cress (Nasturtium officinale) Winter Cress (Barbarea vulgaris)
260
REGIONAL INDEX
BrEvErscGe PLANTS: Birch (Betula sp.) Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) Goldenrod (Solidago odora) a Hemlock-tree (Tsuga Canadensis) Indian Lemonade (Rhus trilobata) w Inkberry (Ilex glabra) a Kentucky Coffee-tree (Gymnocladus Canadensis) Labrador-tea (Ledum Groenlandicum) New Jersey tea (Ceanothus Americanus) Sassafras (Sassafras officinale) Spicewood (Lindera Benzoin) Winter-berry (Ilex verticillata) Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)
Soap-PLants: Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis) Missouri Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) w New Jersey tea (Ceanothus Americanus)
Mepicinat Piants: American Centaury (Sabbatia angularis) American Pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides) Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) Dittany (Cunila Mariana) Dogwood (Cornus florida) Hoar-hound (Marrubium vulgare) Mustard (Brassica sp.) Sweet-flag (Acorus Calamus) Wild Cherry (Prunus serotina) Wild Senna (Cassia Marylandica) Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium)
Fiber Puants: Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) Leatherwood (Direa palustris) Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) Nettle (Urtica sp.) Reed-grass (Phragmites communis) 261
REGIONAL INDEX
Dye-PLants: Alder (Alnus sp.) Blood-root (Sanguinaria Canadensis) Butternut (Juglans cinerea) Dogwosd (Cornus florida) Golden Seal (Hydrastis Canadensis) Osage Orange (AMlaclura aurantiaca) w Pueecoon (Lithospermum canescens) Quercitron Oak (Querens tinetoria) Red Maple (Acer rubrum) Silky Cernel (Cornus sericea) w Spider-flower (Cleome serrulata) w Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) Wild Madder (Galium tinctorium)
Topacco ADMIXTURES: Arrow-wood (Viburnum sp.) Bearberry (Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi) Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) Silky Cornel (Cornus sericea) Sumac (Rhus glabra)
Saut-Supstirvte : Sweet Coltsfoot (Petasites palmata)
CANDLE MATERIAL: Bayberry (Myrieca sp.) a
Pecutiak Marxiy To THE SoutHERN SratTEs
Foop Puants: Edible Roots and Tubers: Conte (Smilax Psendo-China) Coontie (Zamia sp.) Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.) Indian-bread (Pachyma cocos) 262
REGIONAL INDEX
Edible Fruits:
May-pop (Passifiora inearnata) Summer Haw (Crataegus flava) Edible Stems or Leaves:
Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal Palmetto) Seurvy Grass (Barbarea praeeox)
BrveRaGe PLants:
Cassena (Ilex vomitoria)
Soap-PLanTs :
Soap-berry (Sapindus sp.) Southern Buckeye (Aesculus Pavia)
Dyg-PLaxts:
Kentueky Yellow-wood (Cladastris tinetoria) Shrub-Yellow-root (Xanthorrhiza apiifolia)
Tse Pactric SLore
Foop Pants: Edible Roots and Tubers: Arrowhead (Sagitiaria variabilis) Biseuit-root (Peucedanum sp.) Bitter-root (Lewisia rediviva) Camas (Camassia esculenta) Chufa (Cyperus eseulentus) Harvest Brodiaea (Brodiaea grandiflora) Indian Potatoes (Calochortus sp., Camassia sp., Brodiaea sp., ete.) Sego Lily (Calochortus Nuttallii) Tule (Scirpus lacustris) Wild Anise (Carum Kelloggii) Wild Onion (Brodiaea capitata) Yamp (Carum Gairdneri) Edible Seeds: Buekeye (Aeseulus Californieus) Chia (Salvia sp.) 263
REGIONAL INDEX
Chinquapin (Castanopsis chrysophylla) Goosefoot (Chenopodium sp.)
Islay (Prunus ilicifolia)
Oak (Quercus sp.)
Pine (Pinus sp.)
Pond-lily (Nuphar polysepalum) Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) Tarweed (Madia sativa)
Walnut (Juglans Californica)
White Sage (Audibertia polystachya) Wild Oats (Avena fatua)
Wild Wheat (Elymus triticoides)
Edible Fruits and Berries:
Black Haw (Crataegus Douglasii) Buckthorn (Rhamnus crocea) Cranberry (Oxycoccus sp.)
Currant (Ribes aureum)
Grape (Vitis Californica) Huckleberry (Vaccinium sp.) Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) Oregon Grape \(Berberis aquifolium) Raspberry (Salmon-berry, Thimbleberry) (Rubus sp.) Salal (Gaultheria Shallon) Service-berry (Amelanchier sp.) Strawberry (Fragaria sp.)
Tuna (Opuntia sp.)
Edible Stems or Leaves:
Bracken (Pteris aquilina)
Clover (Trifolium)
Miner’s Lettuce (Montia perfoliata)
Purslane (Portulaca oleracea)
Red Maids (Calandrinia caulescens Menziesii) Water-cress (Nasturtium officinale)
Wild Pie-plant (Rumex hymenosepalus)
Brverace Puants: Chia (Salvia sp.) 264
REGIONAL INDEX
Douglas Spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia) Lemonade-berry (Rhus sp.)
Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.)
Yerba buena (Micromeria Douglasii)
Soap-PLants: Amole (Chloragalum pomeridianum) Mock Orange (Cucurbita foetidissima) Soap-plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum) Soap-root (Chenopodium Californicum) Wild Lilac (Ceanothus sp.)
Mepicinan Puants: California Laurel (Umbellularia Californica) Canchalagua (Erythraea venusta) Caseara sagrada (Rhamnus Californica) Gum-plant (Grindelia sp.) Hoar-hound (Marrubium vulgare) Mastransia (Stachys Californica) Mustard (Brassica sp.) Quinine-bush (Garrya elliptica) Western Dogwood (Cornus Nuttallii) Yarrow (Achillea Millifolium) Yerba mansa (Anemopsis Californica) Yerba santa (Hriodictyon glutinosum)
Fisn Poisons: Soap-root (Chloragalum pomeridianum) Turkey Mullein (Croton setigerus)
Fiser Punts: Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) Milkweed (Asclepias eriocarpa) Psoralea (Psoralea macrostachya)
Dyse Puants:
Alder (Alnus sp.) : Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)
265
REGIONAL INDEX
Tosacco ADMIXTURE: Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.)
Sav Supstivtute: Sweet Coltsfoot (Petasites palmata)
THe Sournwest (Mainly in Arid Regions) Foop Puants: Edible Roots and Tubers:
Sand-food (Ammobroma Sonorae) Wild potato (Solanum sp.)
Edible Seeds:
Amaranth (Amaranthus Dlitoides)
Chia (Salvia sp.)
Goosefoot (Chenopodium leptophyllum) Indian Millet (Eriocoma cuspidata) Jojoba (Simmondsia Californica) Juniper (Juniperus sp.)
Pifion (Pinus sp.)
Salt-bush (Atriplex sp.)
Songwal (Panicum Urvilleanum)
Edible Fruits and Berries:
Cactus (Opuntia sp.)
California Fan-palm (Washingtonia filifera robusta) Mesquit (Prosopis juliflora)
Sahuaro (Cereus giganteus)
Serew-bean (Prosopis pubescens)
Tomate del campo (Physalis longifolia)
Tomatillo (Lycium sp.)
Yueea (Yucea sp.)
Edible Stems or Leaves: Bisnaga (Echinocactus) Bledo (Amaranthus Palmeri) Cactus (Opuntia sp.)
266
REGIONAL INDEX
Desert Trumpet (Eriogonum inflatum) Mesecal (Agave sp.)
Sotol (Dasylirion sp.)
Spanish Bayonet (Yucca Whipplei) Wild Cabbage (Caulanthus crassifolius) Wild Cabbage (Stanleya pinnatifida) Wild Rhubarb (Rumex hymenosepalus)
BEVERAGE Puants:
Barrel Cactus (Echinoeactus 'sp.) Chaparral Tea (Croton corymbulosus) Desert Tea (Ephedra sp.)
Jojoba (Simmondsia Californica)
Soap-PLants: Amole (Yucca sp.) Calabasilla (Cucurbita foetidissima) Lechuguilla (Agave sp.) Soap-berry (Sapindus Drummondii)
MeEpiciInaL PLantTs:
Creosote-bush (Larrea Mexicana) Yerba mansa (Anemopsis Californica)
Fiber Pants: Carrizo (Phragmites communis) Mescal (Agave sp.) Spanish Dagger (Yucca sp.) Wild Hemp (Sesbania macrocarpa)
Dys Puants: Barberry (Berberis Fremontii) Dalea (Dalea Emoryi) Desert Blite (Suaeda suffrutescens) Guaco (Cleome serrulata) Rabbit-brush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus)
267
Acer, 226 Achillea, 185 Acorns, 68, 231 Acorus, 192
INDEX
Adam’s-thread-and-needle, 168
Aesculus, 81, 211 Agave, 133, 169, 216 Agrostemma, 244 Alder, 227
Black, 165 Algarroba, 61 Alkanet, 225 Allium, 17 Allspice, Wild, 145 Alnus, 227 Amanita, 237 Amaranthus, 53, 128 Amelanchier, 89 Ammobroma, 39 Amole, 168 Amphicarpaea, 61 Anemopsis, 202 Anise, Sweet, 14
Wild, 14 Apios, 2, 59 Apocynum, 212 Arctostaphylos, 94, 230 Arisaema, 37 Arrow-arum, 36 Arrow-head, 31 Arrow-root, Florida, 29 Arrow-wood, 230 Artichoke, Jerusalem, 4 Asclepias, 119, 214 Asimina, 100 Astragalus, 245 ‘Atriplex, 54, 119 Audibertia, 54 Avena, 54
Avens, Purple or Water, 161
Balm, Mountain, 198
269
Barbarea, 124, 126 Barberry, 97, 223 Barrel-cactus, 133, 157 Batatas de Canada, 6 Bayberry, 232 Bear-berry, 230 Bear-grass, 137
Bear’s weed, 198
Bee-plant, Rocky Mountain, 228
Berberis, 97, 223 Berry, Bay, 232 Bear, 230 Buffalo, 83 Candle, 232 Checker, 102 Ink, 164 June, 89 Juniper, 78 Lemonade, 152 Pigeon, 197, 244 Service, 89 Silver, 85 Tea, 102 Wax, 232 Betula, 165 Birch, Cherry, 165 River, 165 Sweet, 165 Biscuit-root, 12 Bisnaga, 133 Bitter-bark, 197 Bitter root, 14 Black-drink, 161 Bledo, 128 Blood-root, 223 Bois d’arc, 221 de plomb, 218 roulé, 231 Boneset, 189 Bouncing Bet, 181 Bouteloua, 231 Bracken, 114
Brassica, 194 Bread, Indian, 39 Breed-root, Indian, 7 Brodiaea, 19, 20 Broussonetia, 252 Buck-brush, 175 Buckeye, California, 81 Southern, 211 Buckthorn, 91 Buckwheat, Wild, 123 Buffalo-berry, 83 Bullbrier, 31 Butternut, 227 Butter, Sahuaro, 112
Cabbage, Poor Man’s, 124 Wild, 126 Cabbage palmetto, 138 Cactus, 107, 132, 231 Barrel, 133, 157 Calabasilla, 181 Calamus, 192 Calandrinia, 131 Calico-bush, 245 Calochortus, 19 Camas, 21 death or white, 245 Camassia, 19, 23 Camote de los médanos, 39 Canadiennes, 6 Cafiaigre, 121 Canchalagua, 207 Candleberry, 234 Cafiutillo, 159 Carrizo, 218 Carum, 13 CAscara sagrada, 195 Cassena, 161 Cassia, 186 Cat-tail, 40 Caulanthus, 126 Ceanothus, 142, 175 Centaury, American, 207 Cereus, 110 Checker-berry, 102 “Cheese,” Tuna. 110 Chenopodium, 52, 119, 174 Cherry, Ground, 87 Wild, 190, 245
INDEX
Chia, 42, 152 Chicory, 117, 149 Chicof, 148 China-brier, 29 China-tree, Wild, 176 Chinquapin, Water, 34, 48 Chittem-wood, 197 Chlorogalum, 170, 211 Chocolate-root, 161 Chrysothamnus, 222 Chufa, 25 Cichorium, 118, 149 Cicuta, 239 Cladastris, 221 Claytonia, 16 Cleome, 228 Clover, 139 Cockle, Corn, 244 Coffee, Wild, 197 Coffee-tree, Kentucky, 148 Colt’s-foot, Sweet, 232 Conium, 239 Consumptive’s-weed, 198 Conte, 28, 29 Coontie, 28 Cornel, Silky, 225, 230 Cornus, 205, 225, 230 Cota, 160 Covillea, 202 Cowbane, 239 Crataegus, 92 Creosote-bush, 202, 232 Cress, Barbara’s, 124 Water, 124 Winter, 124 Croton, 159, 211 Cucurbita, 179 Cunila, 193
Cyperus, 25
Dalea, 228 Dandelion, 116 Dasylirion, 137 Datil, 104
Datura, 247 Death-camas, 245 Death-cup, 237 Desert-trumpet, 123 Direa, 218
(‘891 e8ed vag) (‘p9 a8ed 99S) ‘deos Io} aynysqns Aroyoeysyes e soystu | ‘aseroAaq pue pooy 410; suerpuy. -Inj JOOI sy, *(vInD/H DIINZ) P1eq PIIM ay} Aq pezyyn ‘sueag jymbsay
Dittany, 193 Dock, Curled, 121
Dogwood, Flowering, 205, 225, 231
Red Osier, 230 Western, 205
Echinocactus, 133, 157 Elder, Poison, 254 Eleagnus, 85 Elymus, 55 Encinilla, 159 Ephedra, 158 Ericoma, 56 Eriodictyon, 198 Eriogonum, 123 Erythraea, 207 Eupatorium, 189
Fever-bush, 145, 206 Fig, Indian, 107 Foeniculum, 14 Folle avoine, 45 Fuller’s Herb, 183
Galium, 225 Garget, 244 Garrya, 206 Gaultheria, 102, 147 Geum, 161 Goat-nut, 78 Gobernadora, 202 Golden-club, 36 Goldenrod, 147 Golden seal, 223 Golondrina, 206 Gourd, Misssouri, 179 Graisse de boeuf, 84 Grape, Oregon, 97 Grass, Bear, 137 Scurvy, 126 Grass-nut, 20 Greasewood, 202 Grindelia, 200 Groundnut, 2, 59 Gumplant, 200 _ Gum-leaves, 198 Guaco, 228 Gymnocladus, 148
INDEX
Harvest Brodiaea, 20 Haw, Black, 92 Summer, 92 Hawthorn, American, 92 Hazel, Wild, 78 Hedeoma, 193 Hedeondilla, 202 Helianthus, 4, 7, 49, 50 Hemlock, Poison, 240 Water, 239 Hemp, Wild, 214 Indian, 212 Herba Fullonum, 183
‘Hickory Milk, 67
Hoarhound, 186 Hoskawn, 106 Hyacinth, California, 20 Hydrastis, 223
Tlex, 162
Indian Bread, 39 Breadroot, 7 Chocolate, 161 Fig, 107 Hemp, 212 Lemonade, 152 Lettuce, 129 Millet, 56 Potatoes, 19
Inkberry, 164
Ipomoea, 10
Islay, 57
Ivy, Poison, 254
Jaboncillo, 176 Jack-in-the-pulpit, 37 Jerusalem artichoke, 4 Jimson-weed, 247 Jojoba, 80, 160 Joshua-tree, 106 Juglans, 227 June-berry, 89 Juniper, Alligator, 78 California, 78 Check-barked, 78 Utah, 78
Kalmia, 245 Kinnikinnik, 225, 229
INDEX
Kisses, 131 Milkweed, Common, 119, 216, 219 Swamp, 215 Lambkill, 245 Milfoil, 185 Lamb’s-quarters, 119 Millet, Indian, 56 Larrea, 202, 232 Mock-orange, 179 Laurel, American, 245 Montia, 129 California, 139, 207 Moonseed, 242 Sheep, 245 Moosewood, 218 Leatherwood, 218 Muhlenbergia, 231 Lechuguilla, 169 Mullein, Turkey, 211 Ledum, 144 Mushroom, Sacred, 252 Leek, Wild, 17 Mushrooms, 237 Lemon, Wild, 99 Mustard, Black, 194 Lemonade, Indian, 152 - White, 194 Lettuce, Indian or Miner’s, 129 My Lady’s Wash-bowl, 183 Lewisia, 14 Myrica, 232 Lilac, Wild, 144, 175 Myrtle, 144, 175 Lily, Great Yellow Pond, 48 -Sego, 19 Nasturtium, 124 Lindera, 145 Nelumbo, 34 Lithospermum, 224 Nettle, 127, 214 Loco-weed, 245 Nicotiana, 229 Lophophora, 252 Nigger-head, 133 Lotus, American, 34 Nightshade, 242 Lycium, 86 Nopal, 107, 132 Nuphar, 49 Maclura, 221 Nut-grass, 25 Madder, Wild, 225 Madia, 56 Mahogany, 156 Oak, Basket, 68 Mandrake, American, 99 California Black, 73 Mangla, 156 Canyon Live, 73 Man-of-the-earth, 10 Coast Live, 73 - Manzanita, 94, 156, 230, 257 Cow, 68 Maple, Red, 226 Dyer’s, 222 Sugar, 220 Kellogg, 73 Mariposa tulip, 19 Poison, 257 Marrubium, 186 ‘Quercitron, 222 Mastransia, 204 Scarlet, 222 Maté, 164 Valley White, 73 May-apple, 99 valparaiso, 73 Maypop, 101 Oat, Wild, 17, 54 Menispermum, 242 Onion, Wild, 17, 20 Mentha, 152 Opuntia, 107, 132 Mescal, 134, 217 Orange, Mock, 179 -bean, 251 ° Osage, 221 -button, 252 Oregon Grape, 97 Mesquit, 61 Orontium, 36 Micromeria, 150 Osier, Red, 230
272
Pachyma, 39 Palm, California Fan, 112 Palmetto, Cabbage, 138 Palmilla ancha, 104 Panicum, 56 Papaw, 100 Passiflora, 101 Peach, Wild, 198 Peanut, Hog, 61 Pear, Prickly, 107
Sugar, 89 Peltandra, 36 Penca, 132 Pennyroyal, American, 193 Pepperwood, 139, 207 Petasites, 232 Peucedanum, 10 Peyote, 252 Phragmites, 218 Physalis, 87 Phytolacca, 119, 244 Pickles, 123 Pieplant, Wild, 121 Pigweed, 52, 119, 174 Pine, Digger, 75
One-leaved, 75
Parry, 76
Sugar, 75, 220 Pinole, 50, 54 Pifion, 75 Pitahaya, 111, 133 Plum, Wild, 57 Podophyllum, 99 Poivrier, 145 Pokeweed, 119, 244 Pomme blanche, 7
de Canada, 6
de prairie, 7 Portulaca, 129 Potato, Indian, 19
Prairie, 7
Wild, 9 Prairie potato, 7
turnip, 7 Prickly rear, 107 Prosopis, 61, 66 Prunus, 57, 245 Pseudotsuga, 150 Psoralea, 7, 214
INDEX
Pteris, 114 Puccoon, 223 red, 223 yellow, 223 Purslane, 129
Winter, 131
Quelite, 128 Quercus, 73, 222 Quinine-bush, 206 Wild, 207 Quiote, 137
Rabbit-brush, 222 Racine amére, 14 blanche, 13 Raiz diabdlica, 252 Rattlesnake-weed, 206 Rattleweed, 247 Red-bean, 251 Red Maids, 131 Red-root, 142 Reed-grass, 218 Rhamnus, 91, 195 Rhubarb, Wild, 121 Rhus, 154, 230, 254 Rice, Wild, 45 Rocket, Yellow, 124 Rose, Nutka, 93 Rose-hips, Wild, 92 Rumex, 121 Rye-grass, 55
Sabal, 138 Sabbatia, 207 Sage, White, 54 Sagittaria, 31 Sahuaro, 110 Salal, 102 Salt-bush, 54 Salvia, 42, 43 Sand Food, 39 -grass, 56 Sanguinaria, 223 Sapindus, 176 Saponaria, 181 Sassafras, 144 Scirpus, 25 Screw-bean, 66
273
INDEX
Scurvy-grass, 126 Mountain, 147 Sego-lily, 19 New Jersey, 142, 175 Senna, Wild, 186 Sassafras, 144 Service-berry, 89 Teamster’s, 158 Sesbania, 214 Teaberry, 102 Shad-bush, 89 Thelesperma, 159 Sheep-nut, 78 Thirst Preventives, 65, 94, 204 Shepherdia, 83 Thorn-apple, 247 Shrub-yellow-root, 223 Thoroughwort, 189 Silk-tassel-bush, 206 Tisava jaune-rouge, 225 Silverberry, 85 Toloache, 250 Simmondsia, 78, 160 Tomate de campo, 87 Smilax, 29 Tomatillo, 86 Soapberry, 177 Tornillo, 66 Soap-plant, California, 170, 211 Trifolium, - 139 Soap-root, 168 Tsuga, 149 Soapwort, 181 Tuckaho, 38 Solanum, 9, 242 Virginia, 36 Solidago, 147 Tule, 25 Song-wal, 56 Tuna, 107 Sophora, 252 Turnip, Prairie, 7 Sotol, 137 Typha, 40 Spanish Bayonet, 137, 168
Dagger, 104 Spicewood, 145 Umbellularia, 139, 207 Spider-flower, Pink, 228 Urtica, 127
Spring-beauty, 16 Spruce, Douglas, 150
Squaw-bush, 154 Viburnum, 230 -grass, 55
Stachys, 204
Stanleya, 126 Wahoo, 197
Sueda, 228 Walnut, White, 227
Sugar-pear, 89 Wappatoo, 33
Sumac, Dwarf, 154 Washingtonia, 112 Poison, 254 Waxberry, 232 Smooth, 154, 230 Wheat, Wild, 55 Staghorn, 154 Whisky, Dry, 252 Swamp, 254 Winter-berry, 165
Sunflower, Wild, 4, 49, 222 Wintergreen, 102, 147
Sweet-flag, 192 Woundwort, 204
Taraxacum, 116 Xanthorrhiza, 223
Tarweed, 56 Tea, Chaparral, 159 Yamp, 13 Desert, 158 Yarrow, 185 Hemlock, 149 Yaupon, 161 Labrador, 144 Yellowwood, Kentucky, 221
274
INDEX
Yerba buena, 150 Yucca, 104, 137, 168, 216 del pescado, 211 de vibora, 206 Zamia, 28 mansa, 200 Zizania, 45 santa, 198 Zygadenus, 245
275