0' »L*^'* ^'?- V «>iv 0' *L.*^'* '-;> . "^ V-^^ v^' Q_ *r^^^^T»"' ^0■' ^ "T^'^^i^' ^"^ '^b '■'T:-^^'^^' .0*' ti* - . « -^^ "" ^ s • • , ^ ""^ \^ . . o "^^ " ' n^ s • ♦ , ^ !CT> A <-. -?..♦ .O*" V --TIT''' A <-. ■'A';* .&■■ *^> -^ o^l r.^- OHO. ^^ .^ v-^^ r •^ '. %.^^ y^M^ \/ o^^v %/ '"•*' ^^ o V A <^ 'o . * * «,0 v^. -" .r ... r^^"" .«>' ..... --^. V "^^^^-^^ oV^^Pi."-. "^^.-^^ ^^Mm>^. ^^^ '^0^ ^oV -^0 •^^^ ^o \ '■.-TC^ 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," "Finding the Worth While in the Southwest," Etc. ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS, AND BY NUMEROUS LINE DRAWINGS BY LUCY HAMILTON ARING NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE © CO. 1920 %3 Copyright, 1 920, by Robert M. McBride USEFUL WILD PLANTS species of nut-pine {Pinus cenibroides, Zucc.) is in- digenous. The Parry Pine (P. qiiadrifolia, 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 pinon 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 pinon 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 Pinon 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 piiions 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 77 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 Califormca, Nutt,, locally abundant along the mountain borders of the 78 Jojoba (Sim m on dsia Calif orn ica) 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 dioecious, so that not every individual is seed-bearing — only those possessing pistillate flow^ers. 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 jojohas, 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. Leon Dieguet in "Re\aie des Sciences Naturelles Appliquees" (October, 1895), SO 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 Calif ornica, 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 Calif ornians 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 ujDon 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- f ornians' treatment of the Pacific Coast species is an interesting instance, I think, of what may be done with the most unpromising material. 82 m CHAPTER V SOME LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS AND BERRIES Greate store of f orrest frute which hee Had for his food hite gathered from the tree. The Faerie Queene. NO 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- _ 1 \ Buffalo-berry (Shepherdia argentea) tioned than this. By the French voyageurs and en- gages it was called graisse 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 II LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS fact that it was a customary garnish to the monot- onous butfalo steaks and tongue of those early days. Tlie 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 dioecious, 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. Jell}'- 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. Andersonii, 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. Andersonii much smaller. To the Navajo Lidians, 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 Zunis 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." ^ 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, "mid 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 Zufii Indians, who used to grow it, and perhaps still do, in the women's quaint little gardens on the slope of the river Zuni — 1 Stevenson. "Ethnobotany of the ZuCi Indians." 30th Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethnology. 87 Tomato del Campo (Physalis longifolia) 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, w^lien 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-pui'ple berries. These are juicy, with a pleasant taste not unlike huckleberries. To white settlers throughout the continent this berry has 2 "Ethnobotanj' of the Zuni Indians." 3 Service-berry, a name transferred from an English species of Pyrus, whose fruit was known as serh, serve or service; June- herry, because the fruit generally ripens in June; Shad-bush, be- cause blooming when the shad are running in Eastern rivers. 89 90 1 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 w^eight. 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 {Rhammis 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 Ehamnus 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 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS instance, the plump berries of the beautiful Nutka Rose of the Far Northwest. Frost is an essential rTx: ^i-(:^^x:tri^^ 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 'kittle 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 Cahfornia, 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 4 Chesnut. "Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., Cali- fornia." 96 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS 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- heris Canadensis, Pursh), found in mountain woods Oregon Grape (Berberis aquifoUum) 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 aquifoliiim, 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 (Berber-is aquifoliumj 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 Leinoii or American Man- drake {PodophyUiim peliatum, L.), a common herb, with umbrella-like leaves sheeting the ground in rich 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 tiers, asimin(\^--a Gallicized form of the Assiniboiiie 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 {Gaultkeria procimihetis, 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 Eastern 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 (Oaultheria ShallonJ 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 haccaia, Torr., called by the Mexican population Palmilla ancha or Ddtil — 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 Bdtil as a luxury. 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 Lidians, who w^ould 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 w^as 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 sq>me- 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 hrevifolia, 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 siigndficance and enters in many ways into na- tive religious ceremonies. Among the Navajos, Yucca baccata is called Jioskawn 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 -> 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 w^ith vicious spines and bristles. Of several genera indigenous to the United States producing edible berries, the most widely distributed is Oprmfia, embracing two quite different looking divi- sions, one with broad, flattened joints (the Platopun- tias) and one with cylindric, cane-like joints (the Cylindropimtias) . Tlie former division includes the well-knowm Prickly Pears or Indian Figs, of w^hich two species {Opiinfia vulgaris, Mill., and 0. Rafi- nesquii, 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 tlie same class with the fat, juicy ''pears" of many of the species growing wild in the Southwestern desert country, w^iere 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 0. Engel- 107 USEFUL WILD PLANTS manni and 0. 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 Tuna, Mill., and 0. Ficus-Indica, Mill., and they now grow w^ild 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. m 1 LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS glove 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 do'wm 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 maturitj" 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 eBull. 110 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 m form, with a juicy, seedy, crimson pulp. To civilized tastes, the fresh fruit is rather mawkish, less sweet than that of the related pitahaija dulce, which is common on the Mexican side of the border and is borne by Cereus Thurheri, 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. E. 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, and 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. rohusta), which has been widely introduced into cultivation in the Southwest. In the caiions 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 the desert 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 1 § * ta c; 1 •-' -*-j 1 "^ X *H a ^ 'yj y—* ■_» W) rt CL, •y. 2 j2 £ "3 rt ^ ^ fe ^ -d "5 rt rt u 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. WHAT 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 a?id 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 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 drawni butter, or as a salad with French dressing. The cooked fern has a taste quite its own, with a sugges- tion of almond. Its food value, according to some experiments 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 115 Brackex Shoots (Pteris aquilina) 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. 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 tliese ncw-fledged Ameri- cans dotting tlie 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, w^hich, 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 f Chicory (Cichorium Intyhus) ^^J-*^ Dig up the roots in tlie 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- 2)odium 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- w^eed (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 (Asclepias Hyriaca) 120 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 {Riimex 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. liymenose'paJus, 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 oif 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 Canaigre. Under the last name it has some celebrity as tanning material, the tuberous roots being rich 121 1 Wild Rhubabb (Rumex hymenosepalusj 122 EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES in tannin and having be^n 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 Eriogomim, which includes that famous honey plant of tine 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 Eriogomim infatum, T. & F., the so-called ''Desert Trumpet" or ''Pickles," found abundantly on the southwestern desert as far north as Utah and eas-tward 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 Mu-stard 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, etc. — 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 {Barharea 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 fi'elds 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 praecox, 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 Stanley a 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 Caulantlius crassi- caulis (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 tlie 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 hledo. 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 is a 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.- 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 onty 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 Miner's Lettuce (Montia perfoliataj 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 Eed Maids or Kisses {Calandrinia caulescens Menziesii, Grray), 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. Ill, 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 4 The American Anthropologist, October, 1892. 132 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 hisnaga 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 pitaliayas, 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 familj^ 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 jjack 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 135 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 F J EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES somewhat resembling them, are several species of Dasylirioii, 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 Whipplei, 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 {Sahal Palmetto, E. & 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 thoy 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 wator, or munching with them the parched kernels of the Pepper-nut (the fruit of the California Laurel, TJmhellularia 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, G-reene), distinguished by stout, succulent stems, ovate leaflets, large, inflated yellow ami pink flowers, 5 V. 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" (T. obtusiforum, Hook.), with narrow, saw-toothed leaflets, whitish blossoms with purple centers, and a clammy, acid- ulous exudation that covers the leaves and flowers. 1 140 CHAPTER VII BEVERAGE PLANTS OF FIELD AND WOOD And sip with nymphs their elemental tea. Pope. MAN 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 m'ore 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 Neav Jersey Tea (Ceano thus A mericanus) 143 USEFUL WILD PLANTS they are known as ''myrtle" or ''wild lilac"; 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 throughout Canada and the northeastern L'nited States as far south as Pennsylvania. A dis- tinguishing feature is in the narrow, leathery leaves with margins rolled back and a coating of rustj^ 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- zoin, Blume), a shrubby denizen of damp woods and moist grounds, easily recognized in early spring by 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. Andre 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, poivrier, which means pepper plant. 145 BEVERAGE PLANTS after it lias boiled at least a quarter of an hour, sugar is added and it is drunk like tea. ... I 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 scarlet 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 {GauUheria procumhens, 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 an-d 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-tre'e {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 Fre-nch settlers the name Chicot, a stump. In the autumn the female trees (the species is dioecious) 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 IJEVERAGE PLANTS Long's cxpodition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-20 records that while in winter camp on the Missouri Biver 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 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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 roles. This is the aromatic little vine known in California as Yerba Buena (the botanist's Micro- meria Douglasii, 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 1 Yekba Buena (Micromeria Douglasii) 151 USEFUL WILD PLANTS wild plant somewhat partakes.^ 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 drinlv 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 the 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. East of the Eockies 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 coimtry. 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 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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 Kocky Moun- tain region and westward Rhus trilohata, 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 Lemon ade-beebt (Rhus integrifolia) 155 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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 BEVERAGE PLANTS 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 anyv/here, 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 hatdiet 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 Avith mineral substances to be drinkable ; but in others — as Echino- cactus Wislizeni, Engelm., E. Emorpi, Engelm., and E. cylindraccus, Engelm. — the fluid obtained is clear and pleasant to the taste, quenching the thirst satis- 157 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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 Pi m < .1 1 BEVERAGE FLAN'JS 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 Canutillo, a word meaning little tube or pipe. Similarly used is the Encinilla or Chaparral Tea (Croton corymbulosiis, 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 Calif ornica, 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- 160 BEVERAGE PLANTS tionsof 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! Eeaders 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 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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 yerha mate, have created some latter-day interest in the Black Drink. The plant from which it is made is a species of spineless Holly or Ilex (7. 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 liEVEHA(;E PLANTS shape and notched around the edge, and in autunin the branches are prettily studded with red berries about the size of peas. An analysis of the dried Cassena (Ilex vomitoriaj 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 mate {Ilex Paraguay ensis) . 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 f rothi- ness. The liquid is, as the name indicates, of a black color, and is quite bitter. Dr. E. 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 mate, 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 I. 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, 7. 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 {Betida 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- fheria 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 Eiver 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, w^hich sleet storms in Avinter sometimes badly shatter and break. From such untended 165 USEFUL WILD PLANTS 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. 166 CHAPTER YIU VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute. Wordsworth. AMONG 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 a few 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 buskers were gathering into baskets the multi- colored ears that represented the daj^'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 USEFUL WILD PLANTS old Indian man. Immediately three or four women appeared at house doors and called inquiringly ^'amoIeV^ 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 . baccafa, 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 nibbed 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 haccata 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 p>art usually used for soap; but Dr. J. N. Rose, in his ''Notes on Useful Plants of Mexico," quotes llavard as authority for the state- ment that saponin is found in the leaves of this species. The rootstock of a related Texan species (A. varicgaia, Jacobi) is also soapy, and the paper by Dr. Rose just mentioned quotes a statement by a resident of Brownsville, Texas, to the eflFect 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 Clilorogaliim pomeridianum, Kunth. The average American simplifies this into California Soap-plant. Its first appearance is shortly after the winter i-ains set in, and for several niontlis all that one sees of it is a cluster of stemless, grass-like, crinkly leaves, lolling weakly on the 170 California Soap-plaxt (Chlorogahim pomeridianum) 171 Caj.iforxia Soap-plant (Chlorogaliim 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 Calif ornicum, 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 {Chlorogaluui pomcridianuni). 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.) VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP The soap plants thus far named must, from the nature of the ease, 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, farming 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- cate 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 soutii- 176 VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP em 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; S. Drummondii, II. & 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 jahon- 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 S. Drummondii, 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 Statea. 177 Soap-beery (Sapindus marginatusj 178 VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP Missouri Gourd and in California as Mock Orange. Botanically it is Cucurbita foetidissima, 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 ■gA Missouri Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) 180 VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP wash water. To wear iinder-elotlies thus washed, one must be indiiferent to the prickles of the rough hairs and broken fibre that are of necessity mingled with the water. Among the SpanivSh-speaking people of the Southwest, this gourd goes by the name CalahasiUa. 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 Bouncing Bet (iSaponaria o/ficinaHs) 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 fidlonum, 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 w^orld.^ In most plants, however, the quantity is too small to make a serviceable lather. 3 N. 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. Benvolio. For what, I pray thee? Romeo. For your broken shin. Romeo and Juliet. THE 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 pharmacopoeias 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 Fremont 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-dowTi 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- gar e, 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 186 I SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS of them may be made in the proportion of about an ounce of the leaves to a pint of boilino; water — the dose, two or three fluid ounces of the liquid, repeated Wild Sexna (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 1 Wild 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 {Eiipa- torium perfoliatimi, 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 BONESET (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 {Primus 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 Wild Cherry (Prunus serotinaj 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 dysjDeptic 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 as a 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- ioned remedy for flat- ulent colic, sick stom- ach and bowel com- plaints. Then there is the nearly related Dittany {Cunila Mar- iana, L), growing on 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 Dittany (Cunila Mariana) 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 alha, (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 Pacific 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 Rkamnus, with somew^hat 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 {Rkam- nus Calif ornica, 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 I 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 cases 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 foi' the medical trade is an im- portant minor industry in tlie 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 glutinosimi, 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 Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon glutinosumj 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 rohusta, 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 Yekba Mans a ( Anemops is Va lifotnica ) 201 USE.FUL 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 Calif oniica, 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 Grease woods, 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 CBEOSOTE-nUSH (Larrea Mexicoma) 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.2 The other plant referred to is Stachys Calif ornica, 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 2 Mr. J. S. Chase, in liis 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 vk^hen water is scarce. 204 Flowering Dogwood (Cornits 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 Neiv York Botanical Gardens.) n ^ J SOME xMEDICINAL 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-knowii ^'lowering Dogwood {Cornus fforida, 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 Nuttallii, Aud.), which resembles in general appearance its eastern cousin. The bark is similarly useful. Townsend, in his journal of the AVyeth 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 "I 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.^ 3 A 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 (Jolondrina. Their real value, liowever, 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 American-s call it Wild Quinine {Erytliraea 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 {Sahhatia 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- if ornica [H. & A.] Nutt.). It is a member of the Laurel family (to which the Sassafras, the Old AVorld 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 w^ater 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. 4 Chesnut states tliat the oil of the k-af 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 USE'S OF WILD PLANTS 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. IN 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.), tbe Spanish-Calif or- nians' Yerha 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 — 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 cannahinum, L.), an herbaceous peren- nial with a smooth, milky-juiced, woody stem two to four feet high, and inconspicu- ous, gre«nisli-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 Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinumj Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabmum) 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 Eiver 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 legTiminous 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 macrostacliya, 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 silkj- 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." Ajiother 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 foUage clothed with a hoary hairiness. The conunonest 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 Zuni tradition it was from Yucca fibers that men made the first clothing for 2 For 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 deserti) 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 haccata fiber.=^ The tough 3 The 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 hois de plomh 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 f 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 somewJiat 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 {Asdeplas 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 ♦ The 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 1 MISCELLANEOUS USES Osage Orange {Madura 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 tinctoria, 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- 6 The 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 manv 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 Lithospermum ca- nescens, Lehm., of the botanists. It is a rough-hairy 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 Puccoon (Lithospernum canescens) ^ ^ ^ ^ u MISCELLANEOUS USES several from the same root. This, I l)elieve, 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 Silk}^ 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, w^hite 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. 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 ruhrum, L.), that charming KiNXIKINNIK (Cornus sericeaj 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 {Jiiglans 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 Eocky 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.'^ 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 Dog^vood {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- ursi, Spreng.), a trailing, evergreen vine, w^ith 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 engages' name, hois route, 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 Zuui Indian, is a simple bunch of Muhlen- hergia ptingens, Thurb., tied about witli a string, the butt-end charred to serve for the hairbrush, tlie 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 Mexicana, already described). This gum is not a direct vegetable exudation, but is deposited by a tiny, parasitic scale- 232 I SwKE'j' Coltsfoot (Petasites palmataj 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 rA.NDT.KRFT?T!Y (Myrica (JouroLinensis) 235 CHAPTER XI A CAUTIONARY CHAPTER ON CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS "Within the infant rind of this weak flower Poison hath residence." THERE 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 1 A 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. 80. 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 Death Cup (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 Wateb 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 con\'Tilsions, 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. - 2 One wonders why hemlock, which we associate with a forest 240 w Butternut {Jitglans cincrca). 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.) 3 1 s^- Poison Hf:mlock (Conium maculattim) 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 I MOONSEED (Menispcrmu m Vanadense) 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 CERTALN 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 tlie 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 ef\"ergreen 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. molUssimu.^, Torr., distinguished by purple flow- ers and densely hairy foliage. The genus is of the Loco-weed (Astragalus mollissimu^) 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 poirsoning 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 3 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, wliich taken into the human bod}' 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 Daj^s: 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 Jimaon. 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 Zuiiis, 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 Zuni Indians," ^ records a legend about this flower worthy of Ovid. It seems that long, long ago while the Zuiiis 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 5 SOth Ann. Kept. Bureau of American Ethnology. 250 A 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 Zuhis 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 Bed 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 secundifora, Ort., or Sophora secundifora, 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 kill a man. Among some tribes, as the lowas, 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 diabolica (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 252 ^ 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 is 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 Mexico," gives an inter- Mescal-bittox (Lophophora Williainsii) 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 I Swamp Sumac (Rhus venenata) I 255 USEFUL WILD PLANTS Poison Ivy is very variable in habit, either a low, upright bush, or a vine climbing by aerial rootlets 1 Poison Ivy (Rhus Toxicodendron) over fences and far up into the crowns of treesJ 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 radicans. 256 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. diversiloha, 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 of the Rocky Mountains (including Middle and Eastern Canada) Food Plants: Edible Roots and Ttihers: 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) Sprinu' Beauty (Claytonia Viruinica) Virginia Tuckaho (Peltandra Virginiea) Water Chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea) Wild Onion (Allium tricoccum) 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 (Shepberdia argentea) w CranbeiTy (Oxycoeeus 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 (Amelanehier sp.) Strawberry (Fragaria sp.) Teaberry (Gaultheria proeumbens) Edible Stems or Leaves: Bracken (Pteris aquilina) Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) Dock (Rumex crispus) Lamb's quarters (Cbenopodium album) Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) Nettle (Urtica dioica) Pokeweed (Phytolacca decandra) Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) Water-cress (Nasturtium officinale) Winter Cress (Barbarea vulgaris) 260 p rp:gional index Beverage Plants: Bireh (Betula sp.) Chicory (Cichorium Intybus) Goldenrod (Solidago odora) a Hemlock-tree (Tsuga Canadensis) Indian Lemonade (Rhus trilobata) w Inkberry (Ilex glabra) a Kentucky Coifee-tree (Gymnocladus Canadensis) Labrador-tea (Ledum Groenlandicum) New Jersey tea (Ceanothus Araerieanus) Sassafras (Sassafras officinale) Spicewood (Lindera Benzoin) Winter-berry (Ilex verticillata) WintergTeen (Gaultheria proeumbens) Soap-Plants : Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis) Missouri Gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) w New Jersey tea (Ceanothus Americanus) Medicinal Plants: American Centaury (Sabbatia angularis) American Pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides) Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) Dittany (Cunila Mariana) Dogwood (Cornus fiorida) Hoar-hound (Marrubium vulgare) Mustard (Brassica sp.) Sweet-flag (Acorus Calamus) Wild Cheriy (Prunus serotina) Wild Senna (Cassia Marylandica) YaiTow (Achillea Millefolium) Fiber Plants: Indian Hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) Leatherwood (Dirca palustris) Milkweed (Asclepias sp.) Nettle (Urtica sp. ) Reed-grass (Phragmites communis) 261 REGIONAL INDEX r Dye-Plants : Alder (Alnus sp.) Blood-rout ( Sani^uinaria Canadensis) Butternut (Juglaus einerea) Dogwood (Cornus florida) Golden Seal (Hydrastis Canadensis) Osage Orange (Madura aurantiaca) w Puecoon (Lithospennnm caneseens) Quercitron Oak (Quereus tinctoria) Red Maple (Acer rubrum) Silky Cornel (Comus sericea) w Spider- tiower (Cleome serrulata) w Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) Wild Madder (Galium tinctorium) Tobacco Admixtures : Arrow- wood (Viburnum sp.) Bearberry ( Arctostapliylos Uva-ursi) Red Osier Dogwood (Cornus stolonifera) Silky Cornel (Cornus sericea) Sumac (Rhus glabra) Salt- Substitute : Sweet Coltsfoot (Petasites palmata) Candle Material : BaybeiTy (Myrica sp.) a Peculiar Mainly to the Southern States Food Plants: Edible Roots and Tubers: Conte (Smilax Pseudo-China) Coon tie (Zamia sp.) Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.) Indian-bread (Pachyma cocos) 262 REGIONAL INDEX Edible Fruits: May-pop (Passiflora incamata) Summer Haw (Crataegus flava) Edible Stems or Leaves: Cabbage Palmetto (Sabal Palmetto) Scurvy Grass (Barbarea praecox) Beverage Plants: Cassena (Ilex vomitoria) Soap-Plants : Soap-berry (Sapindus sp.) Southern Buckeye (Aesculus Pavia) Dye-Plants : Kentucky Yellow-wood (Cladastris tinctoria) Shrub- Yellow-root (XanthoiThiza apiifolia) The Pacific Slope Food Plants: Edible Roots and Tubers: Arrowhead (Sagittaria variabilis) Biscuit-root (Peueedanum sp.) Bitter-root (Lewisia rediviva) Camas (Camassia esculenta) Chufa (Cyperus esculentus) Harvest Brodiaea (Brodiaea grandiflora) Indian Potatoes (Calochortus sp., Camassia sp., Brodiaea sp., etc.) Sego Lily (Calochortus Nuttallii) Tule (Seirpus lacustris) Wild Anise (Carum Kelloggii) Wild Onion (Brodiaea eapitata) Yamp (Carum Gairdneri) Edible Seeds: Buckeye (Aesculus Califomieus) Chia (Salvia sp.) 263 REGIONAL INDEX Chinquapin (Castano])sis chi'vsophylla) Goosefoot (Chenopodium sp.) Islay (Primus ilicifolia) Oak (Quereus sp.) Pine (Pinus sp.) Pond-lily (Nupliar polysepalum) Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) Tarweed (Madia sativa) Walnut (Juglans Calif ornica) White Sage (Audibertia polystaehya) Wild Oats (A vena fatua) Wild Wheat (Elymus triticoides) Edible Fruits and Berries: Black Haw (Crataegus Douglasii) Buckthorn (Rhamnus eroeea) Cranberry (Oxycoccus sp.) Currant (Ribes aureum) Grape (Vitis Calif ornica) 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) Beverage Plants : Chia (Salvia sp.) 264 REGIONAL INDEX Douglas Spruce (Pseudotsuga taxifolia) Lemonade-ben-y (Rhus sp.) Manzanila (Arctostapliylos sji.) Yerba buena (Micromeria Dougla.sii) Soap-Plants : Amole (Chloragalum pomeridianum) Mock Orange (Cucurbita foetidissima) Soap-plant (Chloi'ogalum ponieridianum) Soap-root ( Chenopodium Calif ornicum) Wild Lilac (Ceanothus sp.) Medicinal Plants : California Laurel ( Umbellularia Calif omica) Canchalagua (Erythraea venusta) Cascara sagrada (Rhamnus Californica) Gum-plant (Grindelia sp.) Hoar-bound (Marrubium vulgare) Mastransia (Staehj's Californica) Mustard (Brassica sp.) Quinine-bush (Garrya elliptica) Western Dogwood (Cornus Nuttallii) Yarrow (Achillea Millifolium) Yerba mansa (Anemopsis Californica) Yerba santa (Eriodictyon glutinosum) Fish Poisons: Soap-root (Chloragalum pomeridianum) Turkey Mullein (Croton setigerus) Fiber Plants: Indian Hemp (Apocynum eannabinum) Milkweed (Aselepias eriocarpa) Psoralea (Psoralea macrostaehya) Dye Plants: Alder (Alnus sp.) Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) 265 REGIONAL INDEX Tobacco Admixture: Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) Salt Substitute: Sweet Coltsfoot (Petasites palmata) The Southwest (Mainly in Arid Regions) Food Plants: Edible Roots and Tubers: Sand-food (Amraobroma Sonorae) Wild potato (Solanum sp.) Edible Seeds: Amaranth (Amaranthus blitoides) Chia (Salvia sp.) Goosefoot ( Clienopodium leptophyllum) Indian Millet (Eriocoma cuspidata) Jojoba (Simmondsia Calif ornica) Juniper (Juniperus sp.) Pinon (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) Screw-bean (Pi'osopis pubescens) Tomate del campo (Physalis longifolia) Tomatillo (Lycium sp.) Yucca (Yucca sp.) Edible Stems or Leaves: Bisnaga (Echinoeactus) Bledo (Amaranthus Palmeri) Cactus (Opuntia sp.) 266 REGIONAL INDEX Desert Trumpet (Eriogonum inflatum) Mescal (Agave sp.) Sotol (Dasylirion sp.) Spr.nish Bayonet (Yucca Whipplei) Wild Cabbage (Caulanthus crassifolius) Wild C'abl)ago (Stanleya pinnatifida) Wild Khubarb (Rumex hymenosepalus) Beverage Plants: Barrel Cactus (Echinocactus 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) Medicinal Plants : Creosote-bush (Larrea Mexicana) Y'erba mansa (Anemopsis Californica) Fiber Plants: Carrizo (Phragmites communis) Mescal (Agave sp.) Spanish Dagger (Yucca sp.) Wild Heuip (Sesbania macrocarpa) Dye Plants: Barberry (Berbei-is Fremontii) Dalea (Dalea Emoryi) Desert Elite (Suaeda sulfruteseens) Guaeo (Cleome serrulata) Rabbit-brush (Chrysothaunius nauseosus) 267 i4l INDEX Acer, 226 Achillea, 185 Acorns, 68 231 Acorus, 1!>2 Adam's-threadand-needle, 168 Aesculus, 81, 211 Agave, 133, 169, 216 Agrostemma, 244 Alder, 227 Black, 165 AlgaiToba, lil Alkanet, 225 Allium, 17 Allspice, Wild, 145 Alnus, 227 Amanita, 237 Amaranthus, 53, 128 Amelanchier, 89 Ammobroma, 39 Amole, 168 Amphicaipaea, 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, Rockj' 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 roulo, 231 Boneset, 189 Bouncing Bet, 181 Bouteloua, 231 Bracken, 114 INDEX Brassica, 194 Bread, Indian, 39 Breed-root, Indian, 7 Brodiaea, 19, 20 Broussonetia, 252 Buck-brush, 175 Buckeye, California, 81 Southern, 211 Buckthorn, 01 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 m^danos, 39 Canadiennes, 6 Canaigre, 121 Canchalagua, 207 Candleberrv, 234 Cafmtillo, 159 Carrizo, 218 Carum, 13 CSscara 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 Chia, 42, 152 Chicory, 117, 149 Chicot, 148 China-brier, 29 China-tree, Wild, 176 Chinquapin, Water, 34, 48 Chittem-wood, 197 Chlorogahim, 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, 150, 211 Cucurbita, 179 Cunila, 193 Cyperus, 25 Dalea, 228 Dandelion, 116 Dasylirion, 137 Datil, 104 Datura, 247 Deathcamas, 245 Death-cup, 237 Desert-trumpet, 123 Dirca, 218 270 •^ 00 ^^ w VO ^ .a 3 """ in > nJ ^ u O. 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