Survival Wisdom & Know-How

Purslane

(Portulaca)

Purslane, although commonly unnoticed except as a weed, is sometimes the tastiest crop in the home gardens where it widely occurs. This annual also frequently becomes troublesome in fields and waste places throughout the contiguous forty-eight states, in the warmer parts of Canada, and even in Mexico where it is sold in the markets.

The reason for this distribution, which is worldwide, is its tremendous production of seeds, relished by birds and rodents. Although purslane does not become large, 52,300 seeds have been counted on a single plant. Indians in our Southwest used these for making bread and mush.

The trailing, juicy plant which is familiar to almost everyone who has ever weeded a yard, is native to India and Persia, where it has been a food for more than 2,000 years. An early mover to Europe, it has been eaten there for centuries. Introduced to the New World back in colonial days, it has spread into almost every American city and town.

“I learned that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner off a dish of purslane which I gathered and boiled,” Henry Thoreau noted in Massachusetts over a century ago. “Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries but for want of luxuries.”

The semisucculent purslane, also sometimes called pusley, prefers fertile sandy ground over which it trails and crawls, sometimes forming mats. It seldom reaches more than an inch or so into the air, although it often spreads broadly. The jointed stems, purplish or greenish with a reddish tinge, are fleshy and forking. The narrow, thick leaves, scattered in nearly opposite positions, grow up to about two inches long.

Unfolding their six or seven petals and some eleven stamens only on bright mornings, the small yellow flowers peek out from stems lifting from the forkings of the stalk. They produce tiny round seed vessels whose tops, when ripe, lift uniquely off like lids.

There’s a trick, incidentally, to gathering purslane for the table. If you’ll just nip off the tender leafy tips, they’ll rapidly sprout again. This way just a few plants will furnish you with greens from late June until frost.

Purslane makes excellent salads. However, after its usual grittiness is removed by washing, it has most frequently been enjoyed as a potherb wherever we’ve lived. Just drop it into salted boiling water, simmer for about 5 minutes or until tender and serve with melted butter or margarine. A little purslane goes surprisingly far, as it loses little bulk in cooking.

You can capitalize a little more on its mildly acid taste, though, by first cutting 4 slices of bacon into small shreds and frying them until crisp. Then pour in ½ cup vinegar and ½ cup hot water, along with 2 teaspoons brown sugar and salt and pepper to taste. Mix these thoroughly, bring to a bubble, and pour over a large heap of tender young purslane tips. Fork the greens gently about until they are all well coated. Garnish with chopped, hard-boiled eggs, sprinkled with paprika.

Individuals who don’t like okra frequently object to purslane’s mucilaginous quality, which can be an advantage, however, for lending consistency to soups and stews. It can be counteracted, on the other hand, by rolling each young tip, still slightly damp from washing, in flour, then dipping it in beaten egg, and finally rolling it in bread crumbs. Fry in deep, hot fat for about 8 minutes, or until brown.

People who like pickles may be interested to know that purslane has been furnishing these for centuries. As might be expected, methods have varied widely over the years, but you won’t go far wrong by just substituting tender young purslane stems for cucumbers in your favorite recipe.

Here’s one that works well. Mix 1 cup salt, 2 cups sugar, and 1 cup ground mustard. Gradually moistening and vigorously stirring at first, mix with 2 quarts vinegar. Pour over as many freshly picked and washed young purslane stems as it will cover. If you have a large crock, fresh purslane and pickling brine may be added day by day until the crock is full. Then cover with a weighed-down plate and leave for at least several weeks. These really stimulate enthusiastic conversation when friends stop by.

Rose

(Rosa)

Delicious wild foods grow everywhere. For example, there is familiar berry that, although you’ve maybe never sampled it, has the flavor of fresh apples. More important, its juice is from six to twenty-four times richer in Vitamin C than even orange juice. Throughout much of the continent you can pick all you want the greater part of the year, even when temperatures fall a booming 60° below zero. As for recognizing the fruit, no one with a respect for brambles and a modicum of outdoor knowledge is going to get the wrong thing by mistake. It is the rose hip, the ordinary seed pod of roses everywhere.

Some thirty-five or more varieties of wild roses thrive throughout the United States, especially along streams, roadsides, fences, open woods, and in meadows, often forming briary thickets. The hips or haws, somewhat roundly smooth and contracted to a neck on top, grow from characteristically fragrant flowers, usually pink, white, or red. Remaining on the shrubs throughout the winter and into the following spring, they are available for food in the North when other sources of nourishment are covered with snow.

These rose hips have a delicate flavor that’s delectable. They’re free. They’re strong medicine, to boot. Studies in Idaho found the scurvy-preventing vitamin in the raw pulp running from 4,000 to nearly 7,000 milligrams a pound. Daily human requirements, estimated to be 60 to 75 milligrams, provide a yardstick for this astonishing abundance.

Rose hips, leaves, and stems.

Three rose hips, the food experts say, have as much Vitamin C as an orange. We don’t pay much attention to these gratuitous vitamins in the United States and Canada. But in England during World War II, some five million pounds of rose hips were gathered from the roadsides and put up to take the place of then scarce citrus fruits. Dried and powdered, rose hips are sold in Scandinavian countries for use in soups, for mixing with milk or water to make hot and cold drinks, for sprinkling over cereals, etc., all of which they do admirably.

This cousin of the apple, one of the many members of the rose family, is nutritious whether eaten off the bushes, cut up in salad, baked in cake or bread, or boiled into jam or jelly. As a matter of fact, plain dried rose hips are well worth carrying in a pocket for lunching on like raisins. To prepare them for this latter use, just cut each in half. Remove the central core of seeds. Dry the remaining shell-like skin and pulp quickly in a cool oven or in a kettle suspended above the fringes of a small campfire.

One good way to use rose hips is turn them into syrup. Snip the bud ends from a freshly gathered batch. Then cover the fruit with water and boil rapidly until soft. Strain off the juice. Return the pulp to the kettle, add enough water to cover, and make a second extraction. For every 2 cups juice, add 1 cup sugar. Boil until thick. Pour into sterilized bottles. That’s all. Poured over steaming sourdough pancakes on blue-black mornings when the Northern Lights are still ablaze, this syrup never lasts long.

Here’s an extra hint. Don’t throw away the pulp. Press it through a sieve to remove seeds and skins. Add one half as much sugar as pulp. Put in clove, cinnamon, and any other spices or flavoring agents to taste. Heat covered until the sugar is dissolved. Then uncover and cook slowly until thick, stirring to prevent sticking. Pack in sterilized jars and seal. Voilà! Fruit butter.

With rose hips up to sixty times richer in Vitamin C than lemon juice—and richer in iron, calcium, and phosphorus than oranges—you might as well get the most good out of them while insuring maximum flavor. The best way to do this is to use the rose hips the day they are picked and to gather them while they are red but slightly underripe on a dry, sunny day.

But even after frost or later in the winter when they are shriveled and dry, rose hips are still worth picking. Earlier in the season, the petals themselves, varying in flavor like different species of apples, are delicious if you discard the bitterish green or white bases. Dark red roses are strong-tasting, the flavors becoming more delicate as colors become subdued through the light pinks.

Even the seeds are valuable, being rich in Vitamin E. Some backwoods wives grind them, boil in a small amount of water, and then strain through a cloth. The resulting vitamin-rich fluid is used in place of the water called for in recipes for syrups, jams, and jellies.

The flowers make a rather tasty tea, if each heaping teaspoon of dried petals, twice that amount of fresh petals, is covered with a cup of boiling water, then steeped for five minutes. A little honey or sugar helps bring out the fragrance. Leaves, roots, and the rose hips themselves are also occasionally used for tea.

Sassafras

(Sassafras)

There is just one species of the familiarly fragrant sassafras that is native to North America. Ours is a small or medium-sized tree, growing from New England to Ontario, Iowa, and Kansas, south to the Gulf of Mexico.

This member of the laurel family, which also includes several trees whose bark is powdered to provide cinnamon, is found along fences and roads, in abandoned fields, in dry woods, and in other open and semi-open places. Thickets often spring up from the roots. Famous for its supposed medicinal qualities soon after Columbus voyaged here, sassafras is now employed commercially mainly as a flavor. Privately, though, it is still widely used for everything from jelly to gumbo.

Sassafras.
Left: flowers. Right: twig with leaves and fruit.

The very limber twigs and young shoots of the easily recognized sassafras are bright green and mucilaginous. The leaves, aromatic when crushed, grow in three shapes as shown in the drawing, all varieties sometimes stemming from the same twig. Also mucilaginous, they oxidize in the autumn to beautiful reds and oranges. Greenish-gold flowers, which have a spicy odor, appear with the leaves in the spring, the sexes on separate trees. Birds flock to the dark bluish fruits, nearly half an inch long, when they ripen on their thick red stems in the fall.

Sassafras tea, famous for centuries on this continent, where many people still drink it as a spring tonic, can be made by putting a palmful of preferably young roots into a pot with cold water and boiling them until the rich red color that you’ve learned by experience you like best is reached. Second and third extractions can be made from the same roots.

For drying and storing some of the makings, use just the bark of the young roots. Older roots can be employed, too, but it is best to scrape off the usual hard, rough covering first.

We like this tea sweetened. Only moderate amounts should be used, in any event, as an overdose of the oil may have a narcotic effect. But you can drink too much ordinary tea, too.

With the help of lemon juice, commercial pectin, and sugar, spicy jellies are made of strong sassafras teas. The danity green winter buds are delicious, and later the young leaves will add flavor to a salad.

In the South, soups are flavored and thickened by the dried leaves, the veins and hard portions of which are first discarded. If you like the wholesome thickness and smoothness of gumbos, why not try this for yourself? The easiest way to go about it is by drying the young tender stems and leaves, grinding them to a fine powder, sifting this through a sieve to remove the hard parts, and pouring the remainder into a large saltshaker for everyone at the table to use according to his own pleasure.

Shepherd’s Purse

(Capsella)

Shepherd’s purse is valuable to wild food seekers in that it is one of the more common of the wayside weeds, being found throughout most of the year in gardens, lawns, vacant lots, cultivated fields, and paths throughout most of the world where civilization has moved. It is quickly recognizable, and the tender young leaves, which, like others of the mustard family, are pleasingly pepper, may be enjoyed either raw or cooked. Indians even made a nutritious meal from the roasted seeds.

This wild green is familiar because of its flat triangular or heart-shaped seed pods which, their broad bases uppermost, ascend the top parts of the stalks on short stems. A favorite food of blue grouse, these diminutive pouches develop from long clusters of tiny white flowers, each with twin pairs of opposite petals. Long green leaves, both smooth-edged and roughly toothed, grow in a rosette near the ground.

Growing so near to the earth and in such accessible places, these leaves are apt to pick up a lot of dust and grit, so it is best to gather them young and then wash them well, afterwards drying them in a towel. Otherwise, the dressing will slip off and form a pool in the bottom of the salad bowl. Tear, don’t cut, these greens into bite-size pieces and toss them lightly with enough oil and vinegar, mixed 4 parts to 1, to coat them thoroughly. Arrange contrasting red tomato slices for trim. Incidentally, these tomatoes tend to become too watery if tossed with the greens. Serve without delay.

These young greens, which vary considerably in size and succulency according to the richness of the soil where they grow, can also be carefully gathered, washed, and then placed in a frypan where a little bacon has been cut fine and partly fried. Some sour cream is added, but the cooking is slight; just enough to wilt the leaves. Spoon out hot and divide the sauce over the servings.

Although the concentration of vitamins is greater in the green leaves, some people prefer the delicately cabbagelike flavor shepherd’s purse takes on when blanched. Where, as so often happens, these edibles grow profusely near your home, you can experiment with blanching by anchoring paper bags over small groups of the young plants to exclude the sunlight.

The leaves, so bursting with vitamins but so low in calories, toughen as shepherd’s purse matures. They then can be relegated to a small amount of boiling salted water, cooked until just tender, and dished out with the usual butter, margarine, vinegar, oil, hard-boiled egg, or other supplements.

Shepherd’s purse.
Top: stalk with leaves and flowers. Bottom: rosette.

Shepherd’s purse, sometimes known as shepherd’s heart and as pick-pocket, is also used as a tea, 1 teaspoon to a cup of boiling water, 2 cups of which daily are said to stimulate sluggish kidneys. Too, pioneers sometimes soaked a handful of the leaves in water and used the latter to wash painful bruises.

Slippery Elm

(Ulmus)

Pour a cup of boiling water over a teaspoon of the shredded inner bark of the slippery elm. Cover and allow to steep until cool. Then add lemon juice and sugar to taste, and you’ll have some of the famous slippery elm tea of pioneer days, still highly regarded as a spring tonic and as a plain pleasant drink in some parts of the country.

The slippery elm—also known as the red, gray, moose, and rock elm—abounds on bottomlands and on rich, rocky inclines in company with other hardwoods. A medium-sized tree, generally some forty to seventy feet tall with a trunk diameter from about one to three feet, it grows from Maine and southern Quebec to North Dakota, south to eastern Texas and northern Florida. Spreading branches provide broad, open, flattish crowns.

The sharply toothed leaves, scratchy above and downy beneath, grow on short, hairy, stout stems. Growing from woolly, egg-shaped, blunt buds about one-quarter of an inch long, the leaves become unsymmetrical, four to eight inches long, and from two to three inches across the middle, where they are usually broadest. Dark green and dull, lighter on their under portions, they turn to beautiful masses of golden yellow in autumn. The bark is either grayish or dark reddish brown, becoming divided by shallow fissures and mottled by large, loose scales. The hairy twigs, incidentally, turn out to be mucilaginous when chewed.

The inner bark of branches, trunk, and root is extremely mucilaginous. Thick and fragrant, it is still widely gathered in the spring, when because of the rising sap, trees peel more readily. This whitish inner bark is then dried as in a garret or a warm, half-open oven, then powdered as in the kitchen blender. It has demulcent and emollient, as well as nutritive, properties. Medically, it is still sometimes used for dysentery, diseases of the urinary passeges, and bronchitis. For external application, the finely ground or powdered bark is mixed with enough hot water to make a pasty mass and used as a poultice for inflammations, boils, etc., and also in the form of both rectal and vaginal suppositories. More simply, the tea described in the first paragraph is sometimes used for coughs due to colds, one or two cupfuls a day, several cold sips at a time.

Slippery elm.

Many boys chew this intriguing bark. The Indians used it for food, some of them boiling it with the tallow they rendered from buffalo fat. In an emergency, it will provide life-saving nourishment today, and not at all unpleasantly, either raw or boiled.

Sumac

(Rhus)

Sumac “lemonade” is just the thing to take the edges off a hard afternoon. Pick over a generous handful of the red berries, drop them into a pan and mash them slightly, cover with boiling water, and allow to steep away from any heat until this is well colored. Then strain through 2 thicknesses of cloth to remove the fine hairs. Sweeten to taste, and serve either hot or cold.

Some Indian tribes liked this acid drink so much that they dried the small one-seeded berries and stored them for winter use. Many settlers followed suit.

The rapidly growing staghorn sumac, also called the lemonade tree and the vinegar tree, is one of the largest species of the cashew family, commonly teaching ten to twenty feet in height. It is easily recognized at any season because of the close resemblance of its stout and velvety twigs to deer antlers while these are still in velvet. It ranges from the Maritime Provinces to Ontario, south to Georgia and Missouri.

The bark of these shrubs or small trees, which often form thickets, is smooth. The satiny and often streaked wood, sometimes used commercially for such small objects as napkin rings, is green to orange in color. The fernlike leaves, about fourteen to twenty-four inches long, are composed of eleven to thirty-one pointed leaflets from two to five inches in length. Dark green and smooth above, pale and sometimes softly hairy beneath, these flame into brilliant red in the fall.

The tiny, tawnily green flowers grow in loosely stemmed clusters, one sex to a shrub or tree. The male clusters are occasionally ten to twelve inches long. The female blossoms are smaller and extremely dense, producing compact bunches of berries. These are erect and so star-tlingly red that sometimes I’ve come upon a lone cluster suddenly in the woods and thought it was a scarlet tanager perched on a branch.

The hard red fruits are thickly covered with bright red hairs. These hairs are tart with malic acid, the same flavorsome ingredient found in grapes. Since this is readily soluble in water, the berries should be gathered for beverage purposes before any heavy storms, if possible.

Incidentally, the berries of the poisonous sumacs are white. However, there are other sumacs in the United States and Canada with similar red berries that provide a refreshing substitute for pink lemonade. All these red-fruited species are harmless.

One of them is the smooth or scarlet sumac, Rhus glabra, which grows from the Maritimes to Minnesota, south to Florida and Louisiana. This closely resembles the staghorn sumac, except that it is entirely smooth, with a pale bluish or whitish bloom coating the plump twigs.

Another is the dwarf, shining, or mountain sumac, Rhus copallina, which grows from New England and Ontario to Florida and Texas. Although similar to the aforementioned species, it can be distinguished from all other sumacs because of peculiar winglike projections along the leaf stems between the leaflets.

Staghorn sumac
Left: winter twig. Right: branch with leaves and fruit cluster.

Indians made a poultice of the bruised leaves and fruit of the red-berried sumacs and applied it to irritated skin. An astringent gargle, made by boiling the crushed berries in a small amount of water, is still used for sore throats.

—From Feasting Free on Wild Edibles

Plants for Medicine

Plants for Medicine U.S. Army

In a survival situation you will have to use what is available. In using plants and other natural remedies, positive identification of the plants involved is as critical as in using them for food. Proper use of these plants is equally important.

Terms and Definitions

The following terms, and their definitions, are associated with medicinal plant use:

• Poultice. The name given to crushed leaves or other plant parts, possibly heated, that you apply to a wound or sore either directly or wrapped in cloth or paper.

• Infusion or tisane or tea. The preparation of medicinal herbs for internal or external application. You place a small quantity of an herb in a container, pour hot water over it, and let it steep (covered or uncovered) before use.

• Decoction. The extract of a boiled down or simmered herb leaf or root. You add herb leaf or root to water. You bring them to a sustained boil or simmer to draw their chemicals into the water. The average ratio is about 28 to 56 grams (1 to 2 ounces) of herb to 0.5 liter of water.

• Expressed juice. Liquids or saps squeezed from plant material and either applied to the wound or made into another medicine.

Many natural remedies work slower than the medicines you know. Therefore, start with smaller doses and allow more time for them to take effect. Naturally, some will act more rapidly than others.

Specific Remedies

The following remedies are for use only in a survival situation, not for routine use:

• Diarrhea. Drink tea made from the roots of blackberries and their relatives to stop diarrhea. White oak bark and other barks containing tannin are also effective. However, use them with caution when nothing else is available because of possible negative effects on the kidneys. You can also stop diarrhea by eating white clay or campfire ashes. Tea made from cowberry or cranberry or hazel leaves work, too.

• Antihemorrhagics. Make medications to stop bleeding from a poultice of the puff-ball mushroom, from plantain leaves, or most effectively from the leaves of the common yarrow or woundwort (Achillea millefolium).

• Antiseptics. Use to cleanse wounds, sores, or rashes. You can make them from the expressed juice from wild onion or garlic, or expressed juice from chickweed leaves or the crushed leaves of dock. You can also make antiseptics from a decoction of burdock root, mallow leaves or roots, or white oak bark. All these medications are for external use only.

• Fevers. Treat a fever with a tea made from willow bark, an infusion of elder flowers or fruit, linden flower tea, or elm bark decoction.

• Colds and sore throats. Treat these illnesses with a decoction made from either plantain leaves or willow bark. You can also use a tea made from burdock roots, mallow or mullein flowers or roots, or mint leaves.

• Aches, pains, and sprains. Treat with externally applied poultices of dock, plantain, chickweed, willow bark, garlic, or sorrel. You can also use salves made by mixing the expressed juices of these plants in animal fat or vegetable oils.

• Itching. Relieve the itch from insect bites, sunburn, or plant poisoning rashes by applying a poultice of jewelweed (Impatiens biflora) or witch hazel leaves (Hamamelis virginiana). The jewelweed juice will help when applied to poison ivy rashes or insect stings. It works on sunburn as well as aloe vera.

• Sedatives. Get help in falling asleep by brewing a tea made from mint leaves or passionflower leaves.

• Hemorrhoids. Treat them with external washes from elm bark or oak bark tea, from the expressed juice of plantain leaves, or from a Solomon’s seal root decoction.

• Constipation. Relieve constipation by drinking decoctions from dandelion leaves, rose hips, or walnut bark. Eating raw daylily flowers will also help.

• Worms or intestinal parasites. Using moderation, treat with tea made from tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) or from wild carrot leaves.

• Gas and cramps. Use a tea made from carrot seeds as an antiflatulent; use tea made from mint leaves to settle the stomach.

• Antifungal washes. Make a decoction of walnut leaves or oak bark or acorns to treat ringworm and athlete’s foot. Apply frequently to the site, alternating with exposure to direct sunlight.

Miscellaneous Uses of Plants

Make dyes from various plants to color clothing or to camouflage your skin. Usually, you will have to boil the plants to get the best results. Onion skins produce yellow, walnut hulls produce brown, and pokeberries provide a purple dye.

Make fibers and cordage from plant fibers. Most commonly used are the stems from nettles and milkweeds, yucca plants, and the inner bark of trees like the linden.

Make fish poison by immersing walnut hulls in a small area of quiet water. This poison makes it impossible for the fish to breathe but doesn’t adversely affect their edibility.

Make tinder for starting fires from cattail fluff, cedar bark, lighter knot wood from pine trees, or hardened sap from resinous wood trees.

Make insulation by fluffing up female cattail heads or milkweed down.

Make insect repellents by applying the expressed juice of wild garlic or onion to the skin, by placing sassafras leaves in your shelter, or by burning or smudging cattail seed hair fibers.

Plants can be your ally as long as you use them cautiously. The key to the safe use of plants is positive identification whether you use them as food or medicine or in constructing shelters or equipment.

—From Survival (Field Manual 21—76)

A Selection of Medicinal Plants

Bradford Angier

Amaranth (Amaranthus)

Family: Amaranth (Amaranthaceae)

Common Names: Spleen Amaranth, Palmer’s Amaranth, Red Amaranth, Redroot, Wild Beet, Red Cockscomb, Green Amaranth, Green-Opened Amaranth, Prostraite Amaranth, Prostrate Amaranth, Slim Amaranth, Hybrid Amaranthus, Prince’s Feather, Pigweed, Slender Pigweed, Prostrate Pigweed, Keerless, Careless, Careless Weed, Love-Lies-Bleeding, Floramor, Flower Gentle, Velvet Flower, Flower Velure.

Characteristics: Amaranth is an erect annual, some 1 to 6 feet high, and branched above. The stemmed leaves, about 3 to 6 inches long, are dully green, rough, hairy, ovate or rhombic, with wavy rims. The small flower clusters end in pyramidical, loosely branched, reddish or greenish inflorescences. The fleshy taproots, lengthy and pinkish to red in color, give the medicinal some of its local names.

It is an easy thing to mistake amaranth for pigweed (Chenopodium), which makes little difference to the food gatherer, as both are about equally delicious. But the leaves and stalks of the amaranth are ordinarily softly fuzzy, whereas those of the Chenopodium are smooth with a loosely attached whitish bloom. Also, the Amaranthus has noticeably strong veins. It has picked up its deceptive common name of pigweed in some locales because it likes the rich soil found in and about pigpens.

The Zunis believed the rain gods brought the bright and shiny black seeds from the underworld and dispersed them over their lands. Minute, these seeds are numerous—some 28,000 per ounce—and are widely distributed by the wind. They emerge as plants within fourteen to twenty-one days at temperatures from 65 to 75°F. Department of Agriculture scientists have found that if water does not reach them, those of the A. retroflexus are still living and capable of reproduction after forty, but not fifty, years in the soil.

Area: Except where thwarted by frozen ground and too much cold, the amaranth thrives throughout most of the United States and Canada where there is enough dampness.

Amaranth (Amaranthus).

Uses: Containing, despite a water content of nearly 90 percent, 3.9 milligrams of iron per 100 grams (more than any green vegetable except parsley listed in the U.S.D.A. Composition of Foods), amaranth is extremely important to anyone with a deficiency in this mineral, including most women. It is also a vital antiscorbutic, the same 100-gram portion boasting 80 milligrams of vitamin C. Yet countless tons of this unusually nutritious and delectable vegetable, considered by most to be just another weed, go to waste annually.

Amaranth used to be considered helpful in treating mouth and throat inflammations and sores, and in quelling dysentery and diarrhea; one dose was a teaspoonful of dried leaves steeped in a cup of bubbling water, although stronger dosages were considered more valuable. It was also thought to stem abnormally profuse menstrual flows as well as internal hemor-rhaging. Taken internally, too, it was supposed to help quiet and eventually cure ulcers in the digestive trackt.

Flowers, leaves, and roots were sought because of their astringent quality for external wounds, sores, and ulcers. They were simmered to make a mouthwash for cankers, sore throats, ulcerated gums and to strengthen gums that bled too freely after ordinary tooth brushing. Amaranth was even said to be useful in the care of venereal diseases. At the other extreme, it was one of the remedies for a nosebleed.

Because of its ability to produce a soapy lather, the leaf of the A. retroflexus was used in the washing of bandages and other fabrics from the sickroom.

Indians made poultices from it to reduce ordinary swellings and to soothe aching teeth. A tea made from the leaves by some of the tribes to allay stomachache was also used to wash arthritic parts of the body. Strong decoctions were thought to kill and expel intestinal worms.

Arrowhead (Sagittaria)

Family: Water Plantain (Alismaceae)

Common Names: Arrowhead, Broad-Leaf Arrowhead, Duck Potato, Swan Potato, Swamp Potato, Tule Potato, Marsh Potato, Wapato, Wapatoo, Katniss.

Characteristics: The arrowhead, as its name suggests, has a pointed arrowheadlike leaf with the two barblike continuations, one on either side, as well as a stout green stem which might well be the shaft of the medicinal replica of this part of the Indians’ arsenal—which also included bows, tomahawks, and lances. Just as they used the bow and arrow, Indians from one coast to the other relied on this wild vegetable as food and medicine. All leaves are not the same, especially when the plants grow submerged and ribbonlike foliage is formed, but there are generally enough in a group for sure identification.

Three-petaled white flowers, with numerous pistils and yellow clusters of stamens, grow on their own single stems from June to September. Papery thin leaves extend directly below in the form of attractive clusters of subtending bracts. They mature into fruits with two-winged, round-topped, generally flattish seeds.

The tubers are the important parts, and those on the nearly three dozen different species of arrowhead in North America are all edible. Inasmuch as none is harmful, there is little need to try to segregate them botanically, although only about half a dozen produce the big, starchy corms which wading squaws ordinarily located with their toes, then loosened so that they would float. Long sticks can also be used to release them from mud and roots.

Area: Growing commonly in wet places, the arrowhead can be seen in damp locations throughout the southern parts of Canada and where it is damp enough in the original forty-eight states.

Arrowhead (Sagittaria).

Uses: In addition to being considered a valuable and easily digestible food for invalids and convalescents, the corms were used as a diuretic. Juice pressed from them by the Indians, later by the newcomers from the Old World, was thought both to increase the flow of urine and to multiply the amount of the discharge of other waste ingredients in the process. The quickest action was found to take place when this juice, or the concentrated liquid from boiled tubers, was drunk on an empty stomach, preferably while the patient remained inactive and particularly if he stayed lying down in a comfortable place.

Birch (Betula)

Family: Birch (Betulaceae)

Common Names: Silver Birch, Golden Birch, Yellow Birch, Red Birch, Black Birch, Gray Birch, White Birch, American White Birch, European White Birch, Blueleaf Birch, Mahogany Birch, Mountain Mahogany Birch, Paper Birch, Mountain Paper Birch, Canoe Birch, Lady Birch, Swamp Birch, River Birch, Tundra Dwarf Birch, Newfoundland Dwarf Birch, European Weeping Birch, Northern Birch, Virginian Birch, Cherry Birch, Spicy Birch, Sweet Birch, Oldfield Birch, Minor Birch, Water Birch, Poverty Birch, Wirefield Birch, Poplar Birch, Low Birch.

Characteristics: Historically, the birch probably derives its name from a somewhat similar Sanskrit word translated as “that which is written upon.” Numerous letters and journals have been inscribed on thin sheets of the multilayered bark of the white birches, so durable and pliable that many an Indian canoe was made of it.

There are two distinct types of birches growing on this continent—the well-known white birches and the so-called black birches with their black to reddish brown bark. The former grow up to about 100 feet high, with papery bark, flutters of which can be pulled off without disfiguring the trunks for easily and quickly starting campfires, even in the rain. The black birches can be differentiated from some of the wild cherries in that the broken twigs of the former have the smell of wintergreen, whereas those of the cherries are characterized by a bitter-almond odor.

Area: The familiar white birches, both trees and shrubs, thrive over the majority of Canada and the United States with the exception of a wide band down the central western portion of this country, along the lower Pacific Coast except where they have been transplanted as bright and cheerful decorations, and in the Southwest in general.

The black birches grow largely in higher, chillier, and not so fertile eastern regions of this country, where they became historically important when their nutritious bark was credited with saving the lives of numerous Confederate soldiers at the time of Garnett’s retreat across the mountains before regrouping at Monterey, Virginia. For decades the path of the soldiers could be traced by the peeled birch trees. Black birches grow from Ontario to New England, south to Delaware and Ohio, and along the Appalachian range to Alabama and Georgia.

Uses: Before the commercial oil of wintergreen was manufactured synthetically, it was distilled from the bark and twigs of the black birch, this process being easier and less expensive than obtaining it from the spicy little wintergreen plant (Gaultheria procumbens), as was done previously on a large scale for such uses as a flavoring agent for toothpastes and other medicinals. The active principle here is methyl salicylate. Wintergreen tea, made by steeping a large handful of the freshly gathered, green leaves, was drunk, 1 or 2 cups a day, by the Indians and pioneers as a remedy for rheumatism and for headaches, its inherent salicylic acid being the prime ingredient of the aspirin that doctors prescribe today.

PLANT MEDICINE: A QUICK REFERENCE

U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force

Tannin

Medical uses. Burns, diarrhea, dysentery, skin problems, and parasites. Tannin solution prevents infection and aids healing.

Sources. Found in the outer bark of all trees, acorns, banana plants, common plantain, strawberry leaves, and blackberry stems.

Preparation

(a) Place crushed outer bark, acorns, or leaves in water.

(b) Leach out the tannin by soaking or boiling.

• Increase tannin content by longer soaking time.

• Replace depleted material with fresh bark/plants.

Treatments

(a) Burns.

• Moisten bandage with cooled tannin tea.

• Apply compress to burned area.

• Pour cooled tea on burned areas to ease pain.

(b) Diarrhea, dysentery, and worms. Drink strong tea solution (may promote voiding of worms).

(c) Skin problems (dry rashes and fungal infections). Apply cool compresses or soak affected part to relieve itching and promote healing.

(d) Lice and insect bites. Wash affected areas with tea to ease itching.

Salicin/salicylic acid

Medical uses. Aches, colds, fever, inflammation, pain, sprains, and sore throat (aspirinlike qualities).

Sources. Willow and aspen trees.

Preparation

(a) Gather twigs, buds, or cambium layer (soft, moist layer between the outer bark and the wood) of willow or aspen.

(b) Prepare tea.

• Crush the plant or stems.

• Make a pulpy mass.

Treatments

(a) Chew on twigs, buds, or cambium for symptom relief.

(b) Drink tea for colds and sore throat.

• Apply pulpy mass over injury.

• Hold in place with a dressing.

Common plantain

Medical uses. Itching, wounds, abrasions, stings, diarrhea, and dysentery.

Source. There are over 200 plantain species with similar medicinal properties.

Preparation.

(a) Brew tea from seeds.

(b) Brew tea from leaves.

Treatments

(a) Drink tea made from seeds for diarrhea or dysentery.

(b) Drink tea made from leaves for vitamin and minerals.

Papain

Medical uses. Digestive aid, meat tenderizer, and a food source.

Source. Fruit of the papaya tree.

Preparation

(a) Make cuts in unripe fruit.

(b) Gather milky white sap for its papain content.

Useful plants.

Treatments

(a) Use sap to tenderize tough meat.

(b) Eat ripe fruit for food, vitamins, and minerals.

Common Cattail

Medical uses. Wounds, sores, boils, inflammations, burns, and an excellent food source.

Source. Cattail plant found in marshes.

Preparation

(a) Pound roots into a pulpy mass for a poultice.

(b) Cook and eat green bloom spikes.

(d) Peel and eat tender shoots (raw or cooked).

Treatments

(a) Apply poultice to affected area.

(b) Use plant for food, vitamins, and minerals.

—From Survival, Evasion, and Recovery: Multiservice
Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

Birch (Betula).

Some tribes, passing their lore along to frontiersmen, made a tea of the dried bark and leaves of the birches by steeping a teaspoonful to a cup of boiling water until the infusion cooled and then drinking it, strained, for the above and for a fever reducer to a stimulant and for relief from the pain of kidney stones. It was also used to relieve the cramps and discomfort caused by gas in the digestive system. The early Americans utilized it as a disinfectant and as a mouthwash, especially for sour mouths.

This infusion was also thought to be useful in stimulating the flow of urine, in purifying blood after the long cold winters, in expelling worms from the alimentary canal, and as a treatment for gout.

The maple-syruplike sap of the white birch—obtained in the spring as I have done by boring an inch or two into the lower tree trunk with an auger, fashioning a spout from a hollowed elderberry branch from which the pith has been poked or from a bent top of a tin can, and catching the drippings in a clean can whose wire bail is hung from a twig—may be boiled down in an uncovered pot for the hours needed to thicken it to a syrup which may then be mixed with cough syrup or drunk as is to relieve stomach cramps. (The hole in the tree was later plugged with wood.)

Some Indians brewed a tea from the leaves of the white birches, and made a poultice of the boiled bark for the treatment of burns, wounds, and bruises. The ashes they utilized to soften and eventually remove scabs.

The sap secured from the black birch was applied externally to help heal sores and boils or carbuncles.

Skin troubles such as eczema sometimes seemed to respond to an all secured from white birches by boiling the wood and bark in water, leaving enough moisture to make an ointment which was rubbed onto the afflicted part.

The small conelike structures formed by the maturing of the fruits of the low birch (Betula pumila), long central spikes to which innumerable tiny dry scales adhere, were steeped in boiling water to make a tea which women sipped during painful menstruation and as a tonic following childbirth. The cones of this birch were also roasted on the coals of an almost expired camp-fire and the fumes inhaled for chronic nasal infections such as catarrh, an inflammation of the mucous membranes of the nose and air passages.

The Catawbas simmered the buds of the black birch to make a syrup to which sulphur was added to provide a salve for ringworm and for sores in general. Indians in Texas boiled the bark of this tree for use in healing sore hooves on their horses.

Many early Americans recognized the efficacy of the vitamin C in the sap of the white birch in preventing and curing scurvy. In writing of the use of enema among aboriginal North Americans, Robert F. Heizer said in 1686 that the Ojibwas used steeped paper birch bark for this.

The sweet black smoke given off by burning white birch bark was believed efficacious in fumigating the air in dwellings where patients with contagious diseases had been confined.

The sap of the white birches was also credited with being laxative and diuretic. The bark and leaves of these widespread trees were applied externally by some of the tribes to cleanse ulcers and carbuncles, to combat gangrene, and to act as a general disinfectant in skin diseases.

Blackberry-Raspberry (Rubus)

Family: Rose (Rosaceae)

Common Names: Highbush Blackberry, Running Blackberry, Tall Blackberry, Sand Blackberry, Creeping Blackberry, Mountain Blackberry, Swamp Blackberry, California Blackberry, Blackcap, Black Raspberry, Purple Raspberry, Purple-Flowering Raspberry, White-Flowering Raspberry, American Red Raspberry, Wild Red Raspberry, Virginia Raspberry, Western Raspberry, Arctic Raspberry, Flowering Raspberry, Rocky Mountain Raspberry, Salmonberry, White-Flowered Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Wineberry, Nagoonberry, Red Nagoonberry, Dewberry, Thimbleberry, Western Thimbleberry, Baked-Apple Berry, Bake-Apple, Plumboy, Flymboy, Gout Berry.

Characteristics: Being the most valuable wild fruit in North America, both because of the money made from it and because of its eminence as a summer food for birds and animals, the blackberry-raspberry family is known to all. The facts that some plants are thorny and others thornless, that a few grow only a couple of inches and others taller than a man can reach, and that there is a wide variation in color and even taste makes little difference in their worth as a wild medicine.

The simplest method of identifying them is their likeness to market varieties. Rapidly gathered in heartening amounts, the ripe berries—each made up of innumerable tiny, fleshy, and juice-rich little globes, in the middle of each of which is a seed—detach readily from their light-colored, stem-attached centers and five-petaled hulls, coming off in the hand in a fragile, hollow completeness in which each part has rounded from its own ovule.

Area: At the very least, fifty distinct species of blackberries and raspberries thrive throughout all fifty states. They also abound in Canada.

Uses: Juice and wine made from the berries is still used in Appalachia to combat diarrhea. The berries and their juice were long used by many Indian tribes to rid their members of chronic stomach trouble and to allay vomiting and retching. It was considered effective in preventing miscarriage. It is astringent and believed generally beneficial to digestion, being thought mild enough to control diarrhea and dysentery even among infants and young children. In fact, early Americans sometimes combined it with honey and alum to tighten loose teeth. The settlers also came to use the juice to dissolve tartar on the teeth. It was turned to by numerous tribes to cure cankers of the mouth, gums, and tongue.

A few of the berries, or their strained juices, were added to other wild medicines to make them less disagreeable. The juice, held to be extremely soothing and tension-relieving, was turned to by many of the Indians and pioneers to lessen the menstrual flow without suddenly ending it entirely. When the bowels were loose, it was drunk instead of tea or coffee. It was thought to ease nausea, to be an antacid, and to act as a parturient.

Many a colonial deemed his medicine chest incomplete if it did not contain blackberry brandy or cordial. Not only were mixtures of the juice and sugar fermented, but juice boiled down with a few spices for flavor was bottled with regular brandy to make a thick, sweet cordial, handy for unexpected digestive upsets. Too, blackberry brandy was considered to be a rapidly acting remedy for diarrhea. So, in fact, was the eating of a large quantity of the ripe berries.

Top: Raspberry (Rubus); Bottom: Blackberry (Rubus).

The young leaves of these plants were gathered after the dew was off them on a dry morning, dried at no more than ordinary room temperature—not in the sun—and stored throughout the fall and winter in tightly capped jars in dark, dry cupboards for use like the regular Chinese tea whose taste the resulting beverage resembles, especially when served with a little sugar but no cream or milk. Like commercial tea, it is rich in tannin and similar substances and is therefore astringent, being considered in Appalachia and other places useful in controlling diarrhea.

The amount of dry leaves easily pinched by the fingertips of one hand, dropped into a warmed teapot, then covered with a quart of boiling water, and steeped for up to ten minutes, depending on individual tastes, was used to make four pleasantly steaming cups that were held to be an enjoyable blood purifier and spring tonic. A more precise measurement, recommended by many, was and is a level teaspoon of the dried leaves to a cup of bubbling water, steeped until it cools, and then drunk cold, 2 cups a day. It was thought to help mothers in childbirth and was given as a refreshing drink during delivery. The leaf tea, brewed so as to be particularly potent, was also applied to severe sores. Used as a gargle and mouthwash, it was also recommended for bad breath.

Such a tea was similarly made from the roots and rhizomes. This was also held to be effective against diarrhea and, in strong doses, even as an antidote against some poisons. The root tea was thought to be useful for drying up runny noses. The astringency and apparent healing properties of the roots resulted in their flavor as a gargle for sore throats and mouths, for cankers, and as a medication for bleeding cuts and wounds.

There are reports that some 500 Oneida Indians, beset by dysentery in one season, all recovered when treated with blackberry root, at the same time when many of their white neighbors, not using this primitive native medicine, fell before the ailment.

Other Indians used blackberry roots and vines for a tea taken internally by members of the tribe who were vomiting and expelling blood. Others utilized a solution made by soaking blackberry roots for bathing sore eyes and also for moistening compresses for use as poultices. Ojibwas simmered the branches for increasing the flow of urine and steeped the roots to make an infusion for stopping trouble with loose bowels.

The dried bark of the roots and rhizomes of the species were long officially recognized by the medical world both as an astringent and as a tonic. They were marketed as a diarrhea cure well before the Civil War. One prescription was for an ounce of blackberry roots boiled down from 6 cups to 4 cups, then drunk by the half cup about every two hours as long as the trouble persisted. A bigger dosage of this astringent tea was said to be useful in helping those suffering from whooping cough.

A tea made of the bark of these plants was used to control dysentery.

Raspberry stems powdered between two smooth rocks, or with mortars and pestles which the Indians also used, were applied dry to cuts.

The leaves were steeped in water, without boiling, and given to pregnant women to ease delivery. This infusion, the subject of later experiments in its ability to relieve labor pains, seemed to act principally to relieve muscular tension about the uterus.

In the desert and on the dusty plains, often when such expanses were scoured by savage winter winds, the Indian use of tea steeped from Rubus leaves to increase the flow of urine was adopted gratefully by the white newcomers. Bark scraped from the branches and vines of these species was also favored in a decoction for upset stomachs.

Bulrush (Typha)

Family: Cat-tail (Typhaceae)

Common Names: Rushes, Flags, Cat-tail, Cattail Flag, Narrow-Leaved Cat-tail, Broadleaf Cat-tail, Reed Mace, Cossack Asparagus, Cat-o’-Nine-Tails.

Characteristics: Although our ancestors used these favored tall, strap-leaved plants for floor coverings, woven mats and rugs, and seats and backs for chairs, they are now largely neglected except for the wild food seekers and the birds. They are easily recognizable both for their long, tapering, pointed, ribbonlike green leaves and for the wienielike plumpnesses which grow on separate, substantial, round stalks. These hot-dog-shaped protuberances are crowded with initially green feminine flowers. Above these later are shriveling, microspore-crammed tops which, when maturing, drop their male cells of their own accord to fertilize their sisters, eventually producing golden pollen and hoards of tiny, white-tufted seeds that the winds disperse over the landscape.

Almost every part of the bulrush, from the large starchy roots to the cornlike buds and later the flourlike pollen, is healthfully edible.

Area: Except in the permafrost of the Far North, bulrushes grow almost everywhere where there is fresh water and dampness in Canada and the United States.

Uses: The mature brown bulrush cobs used to be kept in closed dry places during the winter and their soft, alleviating down was spread antisep-tically over burned, scalded, and chafed portions of the body. The roots were also crushed into a pulp, mixed with some wholesome fat such as black bear lard, and applied as a salve in such instances.

Bulrush (Typha).

The cut, sliced, and chopped stems were spread upon wounds, burns, and sores. They were also hopefully taken internally to quell diarrhea, kill and expel worms, and for gonorrhea.

Chickweed (Alsine) (Stellaria media)

Family: Pink (Caryophyllaceae)

Common Names: Common Chickweed, Indian Chickweed, Star Chickweed, Great Chickweed, Starwort, Scarwort, Starwirt, Stitchwort, Adder’s Mouth, Tongue Grass, Satin Flower, White Bird’s Eye, Pamplinas, Mouron des Oiseaux.

Characteristic: As the meekest sometimes turn out to be the strongest, so is it with chickweed, which is an apparently feeble member of the pink group but is actually a lusty annual with matted to upright green stems that take over many an area. Commencing its growth in the fall, it vigorously thrives through the sleet and snowstorms of winter even in the Far North, survives most weed killers, starts blooming while the snow is often still on the ground, and many times finishes its seed production in the springtime. It is so abundantly fruitful, however, that it flowers throughout most of the country every month of the year.

Growing to a foot high in matted to upright trailing stems, it has egg-shaped lower and median leaves and stemless and highly variable upper leaves. In the star chickweed or great chickweed (Stellaria pubera), the characteristic blossoms, brightly white and about ½ inch across, have such deeply notched petals that their five appear more like ten, the number of the stamens. Usually gathering themselves together at night and on cloudy or foggy days, they unfurl under the brilliant sun.

Area: Growing the year around from Alaska to Greenland southward, chickweed is generally blooming in some area in every state, province, and territory in the United States and Canada throughout the year.

Uses: Far from being just a troublesome weed, chickweed is a valuable antiscorbutic and medicinal, as well as a low-calory spinach-treated food more tender than the majority of wild greens.

Gathered fresh and dropped into enough bubbling water to cover, it is still regarded in numerous regions as an excellent warm poultice for inflammations and otherwise irritated skin, abscesses, swellings, wounds, cuts, sores, and even erysipelas, infections, hemorrhoids, inflamed eyes, ulcers that have been difficult to heal, boils, and carbuncles. Used on loose bandages, it was renewed at short intervals, the cooled water in which it had been steeped often being utilized on the trouble spot as a wash.

In fact, there were not many such troubles for which chickweed was not used, including swollen testicles and venereal diseases. It was also so utilized fresh, dried, powdered, and made into salves.

Believed to soothe and heal anything it came in contact with, it was taken internally for bronchitis, coughs, cold symptoms, hoarseness, arthritis, and such.

For blood poisoning, the affected part was treated by the usual poultice, and the chickweed also taken internally. For severe constipation, one prescription was for 3 tablespoonfuls of the fresh plant to be boiled in a quart of water until only 2 cups remained; then a warm cupful of this was taken at least every three hours—in badly blocked cases oftener—until evacuation was successful.

Chickweed (Alsine)
(Stellaria media).

Chickweed was also credited with being a refrigerant, an alternative, and an expectorant.

It was considered to be rich in potash salts and therefore fine for the undernourished, especially children, whom it was claimed it rapidly strengthened—all this with a weed now considered merely pesky by many gardeners and enthusiastic lawn growers.

Chicory (Chichorium intybus)

Family: Composite (Compositae)

Common Names: Blue Dandelion, Blue Daisy, Blue Sailors, Ragged Sailors, Blowball, Succory, Wild Succory, Wild Endive, Barbe de Capuchin, Wild Bachelor Button, Witloof.

Characteristics: Chicory blues roadsides and fields with its large prominent flowers, usually blooming from May to October and also occasionally showing white or pink. Although on cloudy days the flowers often remain open, they ordinarily close in the noontime sun and then resemble small blue stalks. The daisylike rays have five square-rimmed straps at their tips. Many times in clusters but usually twins, the blooms are generally about 1 to 1½ inches wide.

As it had accompanied the Roman legions, the chicory came to the New World with the first settlers and was quickly adopted by the Indians. The perennial, resembling the dandelion except in color, forms a similar rosette of multifariously lobed, indented, and toothed leaves that taper into lengthy stalks. Those growing upward on the stem have clasping bases and are not so big.

Chicory
(Cichorium intybus).

Chicory grows from a large, deep taproot, erectly and rigidly angular, up to about a yard high, resembling the dandelion most when young, although it always remains bitter and exudes an acrid white juice when broken, cut, or bruised like its cousin, likewise a member of the extensive composite family.

It is now produced commercially in the western states, particularly in California and Idaho. With the Cichorium intybus, which tolerates cool soil, there are approximately 27,000 seeds per ounce, each requiring some five to fourteen days to germinate at temperatures from 68 to 86°F.

Area: The alien chicory has spread from the Maritime Provinces and New England west to the plains, then in the West from British Columbia to California.

Uses: A pound of chicory leaves, despite being a bit more than 95 percent water, contains 82 milligrams of calcium, 95 of phosphorus, 2.3 of iron, 32 of sodium, and 826 of potassium, plus vitamins A and C, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin. The roots for centuries have been roasted and ground for making into a coffeelike beverage and as a stretcher, flavorer, and adulterant of the familiar coffee bean.

A medicinal infusion for upset or overacid stomachs was made by adding a teaspoonful of the dried, chopped root to 2 cups of boiling water, sipped cold several times a day. It has also been brought to a boil like regular coffee, in smaller amounts since it is stronger, set off the heat to steep, strained, and then drunk like coffee to increase the flow of urine, as a mild laxative, and as a tonic. An ounce of the powdered root to 2 cups of water was sometimes tried for the allaying of yellowish pigmentation of the skin, tissues, and body fluids caused by the deposition of bile pigments.

Being one of the first greens of spring, it was used raw when young, simmered when older, as a bitterish source of vitamin C to prevent and to cure scurvy. A reputedly healthful tea was steeped from the dried leaves.

Crushed chicory leaves were turned to as poultices for ordinary swellings, inflammations, irritations, rashes, and even for smarting and inflamed eyes, the patient lying down in the latter case with moist and cooling bruised leaves laid over the ailing eyes.

The root beverage was used by some for difficulties with the liver, spleen, gallbladder, and urinary system.

Common Burdock (Arctium lappa)

Family: Composite (Compositae)

Common Names: Burdock, Great Burdock, Woolly Burdock, Bur, Burrs, Bur Weed, Clot-Bur, Clotbur, Beggar’s Buttons, Gobo, Wild Gobo, Happy-Major, Personata.

Characteristics: Everyone knows the burdock, which can scarcely be mistaken, particularly because its ever-clinging burrs, the seedpods which followed the Roman legions and other warriors across the Old World, came with the first ships to America and soon spread with the trappers, the pioneers, the settlers with their wagon trains, and the gold seekers to every part of the continent.

One of the coarser cousins of the thistle, the common burdock, for example, first has young leaves that are smooth and velvetlike, if a bit furry, giving a hint of their edible qualities that are so marked that we have watched farmers cultivating the plant in the Orient. The prickly ovule carriers further spread themselves by separating when one tries to pick them off of clothing, animals, and other possessions, additionally extending their range, although they generally do not grow at elevations above some 800 feet.

The initial flowers differ in color from purplish amethyst to white. They burst from stout stalks, sometimes over an inch in diameter. The leaves, varying somewhat among the species, grow alternately on their rapidly lifting stems. They are large, vein-ridden, dark green, and a bit shaggy, a number of them a foot wide by twice that long. The flower stalks, whose rapidity of growth is astonishing, often shoot up several feet in a brief time.

Common Burdock
(Arctium lappa).

For medicinal and eating uses, the roots should be gathered the first year of growth, at least by fall but perferably in early summer. What to look for is easy to determine, for the first-year burdock does not then have flowers or burs. Reaching a foot or more in length and perhaps an inch in diameter, with a grayish white covering and a creamy pith, they are ordinarily difficult to excavate. An especially slim spade or even a post-hole digger is not an out-of-the-ordinary tool to use in this task. The roots should be judiciously and completely peeled before any usage.

The long, obese flower stalks should, for most favorable results, be picked while the leaves are unfurling, in advance of the time when the flower buds would be starting to expand. The extremely bitter rind should be completely peeled and cut off and the remainder cooked in two waters. The young leaves are also ordinarily cooked in two waters to remove their extreme bitterness.

Area: Prospering throughout most of the United States and southern Canada where people and their animals have ventured, except for a southern region from California eastward, the burdocks are prominent along roads, trails, paths, and throughways, walls and fences, yards and fields. They spring up in profusion about old farm buildings and yards, sawmills, logging regions, and abandoned mines, stamping mills, diggings, placer operations, and the like.

Uses: A teaspoon of the chopped roots was steeped in each cup of boiling water for a tea of many uses, having been, for one thing, considered to be an excellent urinary remedial; for another, it was considered to have been a general tonic, drunk cold, 2 cups a day, a few sips at a time. It was another of the arthritic palliatives. The tea was believed to help pleurisy, as well as to reduce the swelling of glands. It was given to women in labor. It was also used to reduce fever by increasing perspiration. In fact, the roasted and ground roots were often seen for sale for use as a so-termed healthful coffee substitute.

Interestingly, in the case of the burdocks it was the settlers who instructed the Indians in their various uses common in those early days. The red men, however, soon adapted it to their own usages; young medicine men, fasting for days at a time in their search for purity and wisdom, occasionally imbibed the bitter beverage of the plant in an effort to make what they had discovered mentally remain in their minds.

The settler and Indians alike made a wash by boiling the roots to bathe skin ailments and diseases. Root tea was even believed helpful, when taken internally, for syphilis and chronic skin ailments. The root tea was drunk by the jiggerful. Treatments to be effective were considered to be necessarily continued for at least several weeks.

The young leaves were believed to be both cooling and dehydrating and therefore were used for lingering ulcers and other sores. Juice from the leaves, taken internally perhaps with a little sweetening because of its natural bitterness, was said both to increase the flow of urine and to rid one of kidney pain.

A salve made from burdock roots was used in an effort both to decrease swelling on wounds and sores and to bring about general healing of infections. Such a salve was also used to soothe and cure burns and scalds.

Some settlers obtained seeds from the mature burrs and started them soaking in brandy for dosage by the teaspoonful for more severe skin diseases.

Another old-fashioned way to make burdock tea was to add an ounce of the root, first year as always, to 3 cups of water and to bring it to a bubble in an open pan, keeping up the simmering until but 2 cups of fluid remained. It was then strained and taken in 4-ounce potions several times every twenty-four hours. Besides the usual diuretic, diaphoretic, aperient, and alternative uses, it was supposed to be generally healthful and strengthening.

In Appalachia a tea of the roots is still used for rheumatism. In the seventeen hundreds in the New World it was prescribed as a cure for syphilis and gonorrhea. A poultice made of the leaves was also used for snakebites.

Elderberry (Sambucus)

Family: Honeysuckle (Caprifoliaceae)

Common Names: American Elderberry, Canadian Elderberry, Common Elderberry, Red-Berried Elderberry, Blue-Berried Elderberry, Mountain Blue Elderberry, Black Elderberry, Red Elderberry, Scarlet Elder, Florida Elderberry, Elder, American Elder, Common Elder, Black Elder, Blackbead Elder, Sweet Elder, Dwarf Elder, Elder Flowers, Elder Blows, Boor Tree, Boutry, Boretree, Tree of Music.

Characteristics: Elderberries differ considerably in form and taste, growing from bushy shrubs a few feet high to trees close to 50 feet in height. Their usual clusters of aromatic, star-shaped white flowers vary from flat-topped bunches to globular arrays, maturing to berrylike, limb-sagging fruits that differentiate in color from blue, amber, red, to black and also changing considerably in taste.

The Indians used the long, straight, hollow stems that became woodier with age for arrows and especially selected some in the springtime, dried them with their leaves on, pushed out all the soft and poisonous pith with hot sticks, and made either spouts for gathering maple and other sap or bored holes in them to fashion flutes; this gave the medicinal its additional name of tree of music. I’ve bugled in elk with an elderberry whistle.

The red-berried elderberry (Sambucus pubens), to describe one, is a 3- to 10-foot shrub preferring rich woods on rocky slopes and in cool and moist ravines. The limbs are obese, tan, with warty pores. The opposite leaves are compound with some five to seven parts, 2 to 6 inches long, with fine, sharp teeth and smooth green tops and paler, generally fuzzy undersides, with lance-head shapes and sharply pointed tips. The small creamy blossoms grow with five petals joined and with three to five stamens, an inferior ovary with from three to five chambers and a three-lobed style at the tip, in pyramid-formed terminal clusters blooming from June to August. These mature into round, bright red, berrylike fruits, usually slightly less than ¼ inch in diameter. This particular species thrives from Alaska to Newfoundland, south to Iowa, the Great Lakes, Indiana, and Georgia.

Area: Elderberries, liking rich and moist soil, grow from Alaska to Newfoundland and throughout most of the continent from California to Florida.

Uses: Stomach upsets have followed the eating of too many of some of the red drupes, and not even all the bluish and blackish fruit is pleasant raw, although dried or cooked they are better, particularly when mixed with tastier berries. The wild fruit is among this continent’s most potent in vitamin A, thiamine, calcium, and niacin, while having close to 450 calories per pound and about 9 grams of protein in the same amount. Indians and settlers used it widely.

The fruit was believed to have cooling, gentle laxative, and urine-increasing properties. Wine made from it was thought to be tonic, as well as a cooling lotion when washed over the bodies of those suffering with fever and, taken internally, to promote sweating both to reduce fever and to promote good general health. The berries, eaten regularly, were said to help arthritis, as well as gout. They were also taken to enable one to cough up phlegm.

The juice, simmered uncovered until thick, was used as cough syrup and for other cold symptoms. The Choctaws mashed the berries with salt for a headache poultice. Some boiled honey and the fruit juices together to make a medicine that, dropped into the ears, was thought to ease earache.

Elderberry (Sambucus).

The rest of the medicinal was usually used with great caution and some parts of it were occasionally avoided entirely.

The white flowers were steeped into a tea that, drunk hot, was used to produce perspiring in an effort to reduce fever. It was also drunk hot, sometimes steeped for seven or eight minutes with sprigs of wild mint, Mentha, to relieve stomach trouble. Hot, it was also believed useful for sore throats and other cold symptoms. The cold tea had the reputation of increasing urine flow when this had been scanty. The flowers, dried and stored, were also used by some tribes when needed to control fever.

The flowers and the young fruit together, besides being utilized as a diuretic and to promote sweating for health and for fevers, were also used in ointments and balms for burns, sores, and swollen and paining joints. The properties of the flowers included those of a mild stimulant. The dried blossoms of the blue-berried S. canadensis were steeped for use as skin lotions and antiseptic washes. Those of the S. cerulea were thought to be an even more potent remedy and were also used as remedies for broken blisters, sores, rashes, pimples, acne, and hemorrhoids.

Some pioneer women mixed a strong tea made half from elderberry flowers and half with their apple vinegar for both healing and cooling purposes. The flower tea was also used to help digestion by preventing the formation of gas and the expelling of that already present. An infusion of the dried flowers was especially sought for tonsillitis, since it was thought to be stimulating to the mucous membranes. Elderberry flower water, used for sunburn, was even thought to help bleach freckles.

One ointment made from the flowers mixed all the blossoms possible with the pure white lard produced by warming black bear fat in open pans and draining off the cracklings. Once the flowers were well browned, the whole was strained through fine cloth and stored in jars for use as a skin cream, a sore healer, and, incidentally, a fly and mosquito repellent.

A fresh infusion of elderberry flowers in boiling water was, upon cooling, said to be a most excellent wash for sore eyes. In a number of areas the steeped dried flowers were used as a general help in cases of fever. It was also held to be valuable for treating consumption or any bleeding from the lungs.

The inner bark of the stems was removed, dried, and kept for use in very small amounts as a purgative. In larger doses it served as an emetic. The bark of the roots acted so drastically that it was generally regarded as too dangerous to experiment with. Some of the Indians gathered the spotted and lenticellate bark of the elderberry to mix with bear lard for an ointment with which to treat rashes, inflammations, irritations, sores, and other skin troubles. The bark also had the property of acting, when steeped, both as a purgative and an emetic, depending on the dosage; in very small amounts it was but a gentle laxative.

For instance, a tablespoon sipped several times a day was depended on to act as a purgative, while for an emetic the doses were 3 tablespoons every five minutes until vomiting resulted. Again, a large number of Indians and pioneers found the bark so potent that they would use it only in an emergency. Small amounts of the tea were believed to help in cases of water retention.

Still, women drank very small amounts of elderberry bark tea for cramps during menstruation and later to ease the pain of birth and to help labor along. Sometimes when the child was born dead, the mother was given a few sips of the bark decoction in an effort to ease her pain, although it is difficult to explain how it could do this. It was also sipped to assist in phlegm expectoration from the lungs.

Externally, the bark found favor in a number of different ways. The Iroquois boiled the inner bark of the S. canadensis and applied it to that part of the cheek over a throbbing toothache, apparently with good results. The bark, simmered in lard, provided an ointment used to treat ulcers, boils, carbuncles, burns, and such lesser irritations as abrasions, chafing, rashes, blistering, and so forth. The bark was mashed, steeped, and so used by itself for poultices and the like to treat arthritis and similar troubles. The cooled liquid in which the bark had been boiled or steeped was used liberally as a wash in various skin afflictions. The inner bark was used too as a febrifuge and a diuretic.

The leaves, also poisonous both in mature and bud form, were carefully used by some as a potent cathartic when constipation was particularly troublesome. Tea extracted from them was also cautiously administered for dropsy, as well as for a stimulating diaphoretic.

Externally, the crushed leaves were rubbed on the skin as a mosquito and fly repellent. Beaten with oats or cream, they formed a lotion and ointment said to be valuable for burns, scalds, contusions, and more severe skin difficulties.

Some tribes turned to the crushed leaves as a poultice for headaches. Others used them thus with salt added. They were also so used just warmed and laid or tied on the forehead. The leaves were also pressed and crushed to give a juice valued by some as an eyewash. They were applied, too, to stop itching. They also made one of the poultices used for aching joints.

The Creeks mashed the more tender roots, agitated them with hot water, and bound them on squaws troubled with sore breasts. Scrapings from the stalks were sometimes used as a substitute when the proper roots could not be located.

The wood and buds were boiled to provide what was said to be a remedy for agues as from malaria and for inflammations.

Indian Fig (Opuntia ficus indica)

Family: Cactus (Cactaceae)

Common Names: Prickly Pear, Eastern Prickly Pear, Western Prickly Pear, Prickly Pear Cactus, Plains Cactus, Opuntia, Devil’s Tongue, Tuna, Beavertail, Nopal, Slipper Thorn.

Characteristics: Indian figs are the cacti with the flat-jointed stems. Those members of the same Cactaceae family with round-jointed stems are called chollas and are fibrous and dry. On the other hand, the Indian fig family, protecting their bitterish moisture by having spines instead of leaves and by being layered with a thick covering of wax, have long been a source of emergency drinking water for the desert Indians and for those who followed them. This juice is so mucilaginous that it is still sometimes used in making mortar.

The pale, oval seeds are about 5 millimeters in diameter and have a depressed center and margin. The dramatically lush red and golden flowers that grow on the padlike joints of the Indian fig during the late spring and early fall evolve into the fruit that gives the genus its name. Ranging in size from that of small plums to oranges, the mature colors extend from golden green and dark purple to the red of the big delicious prickly pears, as they are also called, of the Opuntia megacantha of the Southwest.

The family is much more easily recognized than harvested, which, because of its sharp spines, is best accomplished with substantial leather gloves and a knife.

Area: Distribution of these cacti has been extended throughout North America because of their popularity as garden and house plants, from which domesticity many have escaped to the wilds. Native only in the Americas, these cacti thrive best in Mexico, where you see the cattle eating them. Within the United States and Canada they grow from California to British Columbia in the West, extending well eastward into the interior. In the East one finds them from New England to Florida.

Uses: The Indians, and the plainsmen, mountain men, prospectors, trappers, and settlers following them often in dusty wagon trains, long peeled the stems of the Indian figs, dampened bandages and compresses with their rather acrid, sticky juice, and bound these on abrasions and other wounds to promote healing.

Indian fig
(Opuntia ficus indica).

Poultices were also prepared from the mashed pulp and applied to suppurating sores on man and domestic animal alike, being especially useful among horses, mules, and burros for the treatment of saddle sores. Too, the peeled stems were bound over wounds like bandages. The young joints were also secured before the spines had time to grow, roasted or boiled, and used as compresses for arthritis. The carefully despined and peeled lobes were, and in some cases still are, regarded as efficacious for the alleviation of arthritic swelling, redness, heat, and pain. These so-prepared, warmed pads were even applied to the breasts of new mothers to increase the flow of milk.

The split joints, care being taken with the spines, were roasted and applied to help heal ulcers. Roasted over campfire coals, they were bound over the swelling of mumps. The stems were also boiled in water to provide a wash to relieve sore eyes, headaches, rheumatism, and even insomnia. Even regarding the Indian fig as useful against gout, the Indians found relief, and in New Mexico, for instance, claim they still do with the split baked joints.

The fuzz of the young Indian fig plant was rubbed into warts with the idea of both removing them and guaranteeing their not recurring.

The arduously peeled Indian figs themselves were used as a fever-reducing agent in cases of pleurisy, mental disorders, and chills. They were believed to abate and cool arthritic pain. The fruit, from which candy is commercially made today, was used to treat everything from asthma and diarrhea to gonorrhea. It was believed to increase the flow of urine—a useful phenomenon in the hot regions.

A tincture made from the flowers and stems was prescribed to ease spleen disorders and diarrhea. A tea brewed from the flowers alone was imbibed to increase the flow of urine.

Western frontiersmen simmered the well-washed roots in milk and drank this to relieve dysentery. Slaves infected with severe diarrhea, in which mucus and blood were passed, often drank only half a cup of milk simmered with 8 cups of water, to which a little Indian fig root was added, both to stop the diarrhea and to restore mucus to the intestinal tract.

The Navajos made enclosed shelters and arranged steam baths by pouring infusions of Indian fig, sage, juniper, and piñon over heated stones to treat rheumatism, eye trouble, insomnia, and headache.

Maple (Acer)

Family: Maple (Aceraceae)

Common Names: Red Maple, White Maple, Chalk Maple, Silver Maple, Black Maple, Carolina Red Maple, Scarlet Maple, Scarlet-Flowering Maple, Virginia Ash-Leaved Maple, Ashleaf Maple, Striped Maple, Stripe-Leaved Maple, Drummond Red Maple, Sugar Maple, American Sugar Maple, Black Sugar Maple, White-Barked Sugar Maple, Rock Maple, Hard Maple, Soft Maple, Common Maple, Goosefoot Maple, Ivy-Leaved Maple, Bigleaf Maple, Vine Maple, Hedge Maple, River Maple, Water Maple, Mountain Maple, Rocky Mountain Maple, Mountain Maple Bush, Florida Maple, Montpelier Maple, Siberian Maple, Italian Maple, Norway Maple, Japanese Maple, Tartarian Maple, Spiked Maple, Sycamore Maple, Shoe-Peg Maple, Moose Maple, Moosewood, Box Elder.

Characteristics: Being the emblem of Canada, the maple leaf is recognized by nearly everyone. Coloring with oxidation as it does magnificently at the end of summer, it is a principal cause for the unforgettable fall beauty of New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and the Bay State of Massachusetts.

The seeds also are distinctive, composed of a tan duo of wings in whose center bulge a plump pair of edible seeds.

The sugar maple, to pick the most famous member of the family, is a large tree 60 to more than 100 feet high which thrives in fertile, moist, to well-drained and frequently rocky soils. Three- to 6-inch-wide leaves, generally with a quintet of pointed and frugally wavy-toothed lobes which are divided by broadly U-formed sinuses, are deep green above, paler and many times somewhat whitened below, and smooth or almost so, making the tree seem more beautiful.

The blossoms, forming from April to June, are yellowish green, clustered on lengthy and sagging hairy stems. The paired fruits, centered between wings about an inch long to form a brownish U, ripen from June until September.

Certain of the maples develop mature seeds in no more than two months after flowering, whereas the bigtree (Sequoia gigantea), to note a contrast, requires about 125 years. The familiar winged seeds of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum), for example, disperse from October to December. They average 380 seeds per ounce.

Area: The maple family, which includes numerous refugees from elegant landscaping, grows as a whole throughout southern Canada and the contiguous states except for the Great Plains and the lower Rockies. The sugar maple, valuable for its hardwood and the major source of maple syrup and sugar, prospers from Newfoundland to North Carolina, northern Georgia, and northern Louisiana, west to southern Ontario and Minnesota.

Uses: A wash decocted from the soaked pith of a twig of the mountain maple (Acer spicatum) was often cupped in a hand and used to bathe an eye to remove such foreign matter as dust. A calming, moderating, and tranquilizing douche for the uterus was also brewed from this particular tree. The bark from the mountain maple was used, too, for the treatment of general eye infections, of worms in the alimentary canal, as poultices for abrasions, and, incidentally, to tone the appetite.

In fact, the Indians often turned to the various maples in general for getting rid of intestinal worms, for treatment of eye trouble from minor irritations to infections, and for increasing the appetite.

Maple (Acer).

An extract obtained by boiling both leaves and bark was said to strengthen liver activity, as well as to open obstructions there and in the spleen, at the same time relieving pain from such disorders.

The gathering of maple syrup, having been common on this continent since pre-Columbian centuries, produced a liquid and sugar far more important medically in B vitamins, phosphorus, calcium, and enzymes than today’s commercial products, from which they are now largely refined. Scarce and expensive as these maple delicacies are today, it is a commentary on the times that colonists apologized for serving maple sugar in lieu of the then-costly, difficult-to-obtain, inferior, manufactured brown sugar.

Mint (Mentha)

Family: Mint (Labiatae)

Common Names: Peppermint, Brandy Mint, Apple Mint, Orange Mint, Corsican Mint, Lamb Mint, Lammint, Spearmint, Brown Mint, Curly Mint, Common Mint, Garden Mint, Canada Mint, Mackerel Mint, Lady’s Mint, Scotch Mint, Scotch Spearmint, Lemon Mint, Squaw Mint, Water Mint, Horsemint, Moon Mint, American Mint, Wild Mint, Fieldmint, Pennyroyal, American Pennyroyal, Western Pennyroyal, Mountain Pennyroyal, Giant Hyssop, Sage of Bethlehem, Wild Bergamot, Beebalm, Yerba Buena, Horehound, Oswego Tea.

Characteristics: The numerous wild mints have been well known to us from ancient days to the present as medicines, scents, flavorings, and foods. Although there are numerous varieties, all have square stems, opposite leaves, and a pleasing familiar aroma. This fragrance may not permeate the surroundings if just a few mints flourish together, but you only have to rub or crush a leaf in your hand to recognize it.

Area: The wild mints, a number of them escapees from gardens, are broadly distributed from the southern half of Canada throughout the contiguous United States down into Mexico. They prefer damp soils.

Uses: For giving a sickroom a clean, agreeable odor, introduce the steam of mint leaves boiled in water. Otherwise, to conserve the highly volatile aromatic aroma of the oil-filled cells of these plants, as well as to save most of the abundant and medicinally valuable vitamins A and C, plunge a large amount of the freshly gathered green leaves into bubbling water, cover tightly, and let them steep overnight before straining and using. The highest available counts of these two invaluable vitamins are, of course, secured by eating the newly picked, tender young leaves raw. For out-of-season use, young mint leaves are best gathered on a dry morning, dried at room temperature, and then kept in a cool dark place in closely covered jars.

Mint tea, made the same way and in the same proportions as a regular tea, has long been considered a pleasant palliative for both colic and indigestion, partly because it tends to relieve the digestive system of gas.

Peppermint (M. piperita), held by many of the Indians and colonists to be the most effective of the mints, was believed to increase bile secretion. This mint, with its distinctive odor, grows about a yard high, has dark green and toothed leaves which are somewhat rough beneath, unlike the smooth spearmint leaves, and produces spikelike groups of purplish blossoms at the tops of the stalks and in the angles between the leaves and the stems.

The leaves were and are chewed to sweeten the breath. The newly plucked leaves were also bound over painful areas for relief. Peppermint tea, a teaspoon of the leaves and flowering tips to a cup of bubbling water, was drunk cold for headache, heartburn, digestive gas, colic, indigestion, and as a sedative. The crushed, freshly gathered leaves, said to have mild anesthetic properties, were sometimes rubbed into the skin to relieve headaches and local pain. Peppermint has also been among those ingredients recommended as a seasickness preventative.

Mint (Mentha).

The milder spearmint, also recognized as a distinctive flavoring agent and, like peppermint, brought to the New World by the colonists, grows unbranched in thick clumps from heights of about 1 foot to 1½ feet, with bright, smooth, oblong or lance-head-shaped, unevenly toothed leaves and whitish to deep violet flowers. A handful of the fresh leaves to a cup of boiling water, steeped for no longer than five minutes and then strained, makes a pleasant tea that some of our older family members still regard as a prompt remedy for nausea, indigestion, chills as well as even colds and influenza, and both as a sedative and as an inducement to sleep.

Our forefathers also prepared for the long, cold winters by gathering in dry weather the fresh, young, green leaves of their preferred mints, drying them at room temperatures until they were brittle enough to crumble, and storing them in cool dry places in tightly closed jars to preserve the volatile aroma, then measuring, timing, and using them exactly like Oriental tea. Because there were no English taxes on them, mint teas were popular during the American Revolution, while they were also resorted to during the Civil War, when importation of orange pekoes, Formosa oolongs, and the like were curtailed. Mint teas were enjoyed in the various ways that regular tea was imbibed, one favorite being with a bit of lemon and sugar.

The other mints, none of them harmful but having a variety of odors and flavors, were also widely used by the Indians and settlers. For instance, the horsemint (Monarda Punctata) which has other names such as wild bergamot, beebalm, and lemon mint—with unbranched square stalks growing up to about 3 feet tall, a general hairiness, and bright rather than dullish opposite green leaves, with distinctive pink to purple round flowers heads from about 1 to 3 inches in diameter—was regarded as the most potent of the mints, giving relatively the greatest amount of pungent and aromatic oil.

This extract, when applied to the skin as a liniment, produced redness and had to be used with care to prevent blistering. It was regarded professionally in the old days as useful externally in typhoid fever, arthritis, and even deafness. It was served by the Dakotas and the Winnebegos both internally and externally as a treatment for Asian cholera and was later used by white doctors. Other tribes bruised the fresh green leaves and let them soak in cold water, which was later drunk to ease backache. This was believed to be stimulating. The Creeks, members of a confederacy of Indians mainly of Muskogean stock who formerly occupied most of Georgia and Alabama as well as parts of Florida, steeped and soaked the entire plant to extract an aromatic solution for bringing on sweating.

It was boiled with the familiar red willow for use, both internally and externally, for swollen legs and for dropsy in general. Some Indians sought the tops of the plants to alleviate chills and fever. It was also used in combination with other wild plants as a drink to reduce delirium and as a snuff for headaches.

The U.S. medical profession from the early to the latter part of the nineteenth century prescribed the leaves and tops of the horsemint to check vomiting, to induce perspiring, to alleviate arthritis, and to relieve gassy colic. It was also taken internally for the expulsion of general gas from the alimentary canal and for the increase of sweating for such purposes as breaking up a fever. Externally it was used in liniments as a stimulant, to produce superficial inflammation with the aim of reducing inflammations in deeper adjacent parts of the body, and to produce blistering.

Another derivative still used, thymol, is available from this wild medicinal. This aromatic antiseptic, used as a fungicide and as a preservative and today largely made synthetically, was officially listed in The Pharmacopoeia of the United States from 1820 to 1882 and in the National Formulary since 1950. Besides being utilized as an antiseptic, it was long found effective against various fungi and especially against hookworm.

With as much vitamin C as the same weight of oranges and about the same amount of vitamin A as carrots, the freshly gathered mints have long been valuable in preventing and curing scurvy and in aiding night blindness and dull-looking eyes, as well as imparting a glossiness to the hair.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

Family: Figwort (Scrophulariaceae)

Common Names: Common Mullein, Great Mullein, Mullein Dock, Flannel Mullein, Mullen, Feltwort Flannel Leaf, Flannelleaf, Flannel Plant, Old Man’s Flannel, Adam’s Flannel, Blanket Flannel, Blanket Leaf, Feltwort, Velvet Plant, Velvet Dock, Torch-Wort, Cow’s Lungwort, Bullock’s Lungwort, Crown’s Lungwort, Hare’s Beard, Lady’s Foxglove, Peter’s Staff, Juniper’s Staff, Jacob’s Staff, Shepherd’s Club, Aaron’s Rod, Hedge Taper, Candlewick, Ice Leaf, Indian Tobacco, Wild Tobacco, Big Tobacco.

Characteristics: Mullein is a tall, weedy, unbranched biennial, hairy and soft, that grows up to about 8 feet high. It lifts strikingly from a basal rosette about 2 feet wide with winged stems and a soft, downy or woolly foliage. The leaves are single, alternate, and widely oblong or lancelike, 2 inches to a foot long, with smooth unlobed rims.

The high, clublike seed spike does not form until the second year, when, from late June until September, yellow flowers become dense along it, each with a five-part calyx, five-lobed corolla, and the same number of stamens, eventually forming a fruit that is a pod or seed-filled capsule. Incidentally, even after 70 years the seeds of the Verbascum blattaria are still able to germinate.

Mulleins seek old meadows and pastures that have been overgrazed, rocky or gravelly banks, wastelands, roadsides, and embankments. They also grow in Europe where the ancient Greeks and Romans dipped the dried stems into wax to make wicked candles.

Area: Mullein grows throughout southern Canada and the United States.

Uses: The reason for some of its names is that it was smoked in pipes and cigarettes to help throat congestion. Also, the Navajos blended it with ordinary tobacco and smoked it in the hope of straightening out mild mental disorders. The Mohicans were among the tribes smoking the dried leaves to relieve asthma. Some Indians made a smudge over the dwindling coals of their campfires and inhaled the smoke for catarrh and other pulmonary troubles. The fumes were also used in efforts to revive an unconscious patient.

The leaves and flowers were classed as astringent, cough-relieving, as a sedative to the respiratory system, as a fungus inhibitor, and as a pain reliever. They were supposed to contain a mucilaginous substance whose protective coating prevented added irritation to the digestive system and, externally, softened and soothed the skin.

Mullein was used to ease coughs and the ejection of unusually heavy phlegm. For this, one prescription was for an ounce of the dried leaves to be simmered in either water or perhaps milk for some ten minutes, strained to remove the hairs and other solids, and sipped warm, with honey or possibly maple sugar added for smoothness and flavor. The same infusion was utilized for diarrhea.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus).

The dried flowers were soaked in some edible oil for several weeks, then used to treat earaches, hemorrhoids, sunburn, rashes, inflammations, and even bruises and contusions. The flowers were also thought to be diuretic and were credited with curing coughs and lung and chest trouble, both they and the leaves being listed as official medicines in the National Formulary for twenty years up to 1936.

Mullein oil was considered to be effective against disease germs in the old days as what we would now consider to be an antibiotic.

Mullein roots were boiled to relieve convulsions, and the decoction was also reputed to be antispasmodic and an aid for nervous indigestion. Tea from the roots was regarded as an aid to liver trouble. Inflammations of the digestive and urinary systems were said to be relieved by steeping about an ounce of the dried leaves in 2 cups of boiling water, straining, and then drinking it cold.

Indians suffering from gout often turned to a decoction of mullein. Poultices made from it were put on sprains. A tea brewed from the heart of the young plant was believed to relieve spasmodic intestinal pain.

An Indian device to relieve foot pain was to soften a large leaf on a hot stone, fold it, and bind it to the sole of the foot.

Oak (Quercus)

Family: Beech (Fagaceae)

Common Names: Georgia Oak, Oregon White Oak, Western White Oak, California Black Oak, Spanish Oak, Red Spanish Oak, Oglethorpe Oak, Durand Oak, Chinquapin Oak, Gambel Oak, Black Oak, Scarlet Oak, Red Oak, Southern Red Oak, Northern Red Oak, Yellow Oak, Blackjack Oak, Blackjack, Bluejack Oak, Swamp Oak, Swamp White Oak, Swamp Chestnut Oak, Northern Pin Oak, Willow Oak, Valley Oak, Water Oak, Live Oak, Scrub Oak, Low Oak, Post Oak, Bur Oak, Basket Oak, Mossycup Oak, Tanner’s Oak, Iron Oak, Rock Oak, Corkoak, Chestnut Oak, Cherrybark Oak, Laurel Oak, Shingle Oak, Bear Oak, Cow Oak, Turkey Oak.

Characteristics: Everyone knows the fruit of the oak, the acorn, likely both the Indians’ and our wildlife’s principal food. Acorns are divided into two main groups, the sweet and the bitter. The bitterness of the latter is due to tannic acid, the acid in our tea and injurious to the human digestive system only in large amounts; but once the substance is leeched out as in water, these acorns, too, are nutritious.

Oaks, furnishing about half the hardwood lumber milled in this country and being a favorite shade and landscaping tree, are also familiar to all.

The single, deeply lobed leaves that grow from short stems alternately on the limbs generally oxidize beautifully in the fall and clatter down to cluster on the ground, although a few shrivel and rattle on the trees throughout most of the winter. There are also smaller-leaved evergreen oaks like the live oak.

Maturing in a single season, the acorns of the white oaks, which have a characteristic scaly gray bark, are sweet and the insides of their saucerlike shells smooth.

The nuts of the red oaks, their shallow cuplike shells’ inner surfaces being hairy, take two growing seasons to become ripe, and they are ordinarily bitter. The leaves are bristled, and the bark is darkly furrowed.

Area: Close to fifty species of oaks thrive throughout the original forty-eight states except in the northern prairies, as well as through southern Canada.

Uses: The Indians had their own antibiotics, one of them being the mold that collected on the bitter acorns during the sweetening process, which was carefully collected, stored in a cool and damp spot, and eventually utilized on sores, wounds, infections, and the like.

It is the bark of the oaks that has been most widely used medicinally. Being so rich in tannin, oak bark is exceedingly astringent and was therefore, after being soaked or simmered in water, valuable as one of the aborigines’ antiseptics and astringents. The decoction was given for piles.

Indians in New England drank it for bleeding and for internal hemorrhaging in general. The Ojibwas, for one, boiled the inner bark of trees and the root bark for diarrhea. Other tribes steeped the inner bark and imbibed it sparingly, as too much would disrupt the digestive system, for loosening phlegm in the lungs and deep respiratory passages and allowing it to be coughed up. Other tribes used the infusion in enemas for piles.

Oak (Quercus).

One formula called for a pound of pounded oak bark, boiled with a gallon of water until but 2 quarts remained. This was then strained. Among its other uses was that of bathing a feverish patient to bring down his temperature. It was used as a wash, too, for ulcers, gonorrhea, and general inflammations. It was given internally to anyone spitting blood, and was used as a vaginal douche.

The white oak (Quercus alba) was considered to be particularly valuable as an astringent, tonic, and hemostatic, as well as a medicine for a long list of ailments that included dysentery, cholera, hemoptysis, leukorrhea, phthisis, intermittents, and gonorrhea. Poultices made from it were even used for gangrene. Powdered, the dried inner bark became the basis for gargles and tooth powder.

Oak bark, soaked in alcoholic beverages, was considered useful as a liniment for arthritis and the like.

Powdered acorns, mixed with water, were an old remedy for diarrhea.

The inner bark of the red oak (Q. rubra), first chewed and then soaked in water, provided a wash that was said to be good for sore eyes, even those of long duration. The bark of this tree was also thought to help heart trouble.

The bark of the black oak (Q. nigra) was also steeped and crushed, as between two smooth stones or with a mortar and pestle, and boiled to make another bath for sore eyes.

The inner bark of the bur oak (Q. macrocarpa) was used to make a gargle for sore throats, especially for tonsillitis, and as a general astringent. Interestingly, the bark of this tree was stripped off for use as primitive bandages to hold broken bones in place, particularly those of the legs, feet, and arms.

The inner bark of the oaks was scraped or cut off, after the heavy outer bark had been stripped away, and steeped in more water than usual to make a mild medicine for children with intestinal troubles.

The inner bark of both the white oak and the bur oak were among those boiled to make douches for vaginal inflammations and infections. Decoctions of white oak bark were also used by Indians and colonials alike to quell dripping sinuses and chronic mucous discharges.

The galls found growing on the oaks were strong with tannic acid and a smaller amount of gallic acid and were used by the red men and the immigrants in attempts to heal skin diseases, including inflamed sores and ulcers of long standing, and to check bleeding.

One reason some Indians particularly relished acorns for food was that they brought on thirst; their belief was that drinking a lot of water was healthful.

Pine (Pinus)

Family: Pine (Pinaceae)

Common Names: Eastern White Pine, Western White Pine, White Pine, Black Pine, Red Pine, Eastern Yellow Pine, Yellow Pine, Gray Pine, Alaska Pine, Norway Pine, Oregon Pine, North Carolina Pine, Monterey Pine, Scotch Pine, Austrian Pine, Jersey Pine, Virginia Pine, Cambria Pine, Walter Pine, Parry Pine, Oldfield Pine, Table Mountain Pine, Digger Pine, Rosemary Pine, Jack Pine, Loblolly Pine, Sand Pine, Bank Pine, Marsh Pine, Swamp Pine, Pond Pine, Mountain Pine, Stone Pine, Pocosin Pine, One-Leaved Pine, Four-Leaved Pine, One-Leaved Nut Pine, Shortleaf Pine, Longleaf Pine, Scrub Pine, Northern Scrub Pine, Giant Pine, Slash Pine, Poverty Pine, Prickly-Cone Pine, Hard Pine, Nut Pine, Blister Pine, Pitch Pine, Sugar Pine, Bur Pine, Lodgepole Pine, Tamarack, Larch Piñon, Ponderosa, Hackmatack.

Characteristics: The North American genus of pines includes the trees and shrubs collectively known as the evergreen conifers, embracing the two or three dozen pines themselves, depending on which school of thought the botanist doing the counting follows—the arbor vitae (literally the Tree of Life, so named because it saved a group of early explorers from dying of scurvy), the great hemlocks (the poison hemlock; any of the small poisonous herbs of the carrot family having finely cut leaves and tiny white blossoms differ vastly and visibly and are no relation), the prolific spruces, the tamaracks, the larches, the bald cypresses, the sequoias, the life-giving junipers (which one winter saved Jacques Cartier and his crew in the frozen St. Lawrence River, which they had discovered), the true and the false firs, and the numerous cedars.

If you make an error between a pine and the Christmas-tree fir or the more similar spruce, they will be the same medicinally. All have a life-sustaining edible inner bark and the all-important vitamin C, without which one painfully dies, since the human system cannot accumulate it. All too often we hear of the occupants of small downed planes starving to death or succumbing to scurvy when lost amid the innumerable pines that clad this continent. Medically, it is all so useless. The cambium, that coating that lies between the outer bark and the wood, can be scraped or sliced off and eaten for sufficient nourishment, raw or cooked, in any way that’s handy. An even more pleasant tea, steeped by soaking a handful of needles in any convenient container of water, will provide the antiscorbutic. Or the greenest, newest needles, themselves tender enough to eat in the spring, can be chewed. The Christmaslike aroma makes the whole procedure memorable.

The pines flower in the spring, coating everything with thick yellow pollen. Once this overabundance fertilizes the female stigmas of the pistillate blossoms, the common cones commence forming. Very edible when young, these require a couple and sometimes three years to mature and let fly their own winged seeds, the commonest food of the chattering squirrel.

Most of the vast pine family is evergreen, but native conifers like the deciduous tamaracks, larches, and the bald cypresses drop their needles in the autumn.

Area: Pines green much of the United States and Canada up to timberline except in the tundras, the deserts, and the central plains.

Uses: In addition to the two lifesaving characteristics too important not to cover earlier, the pines have numerous medicinal uses. For instance, the Indians simmered the bark of the younger pines to draw the heat and inflammation out of burns and scalds and to guard against infection.

The bark of the white pine particularly, easily recognizable because its bluish green foliage—needlelike, flexible, soft, and generally curved 4 to 8 inches long—grows in bundles of three, was so treated by a number of the tribes. The fact that its sticky and fragrant resin becomes a white crust early gave the white pine and the eastern and western white pines their names.

The dried cambium of this particular species, having the property of ejecting mucus from the lungs and throat by coughing or hawking and expectorating, was adopted from the Indians by several manufacturers for this purpose. The steeped cambium of the young white pines especially was also resorted to internally for pains in the chest.

Some tribes ground and hammered the inner bark to a paste which they applied to ulcers and carbuncles, as well as to wounds and everyday sores, regarding it as one of their prime medicinals. Indians who pitched their wigwams around Lake Superior crushed the trios of needles and spread them over the foreheads of supine patients, or tied them there with deerskin bands, to ease headaches. For pain and discomfort in the back, they breathed in the hot fumes emitted from the same needles warmed over the fringes of their campfires, often on hot rocks. The pitch oozing from these and other pines was spread on sores and inflammations as salves.

Pine (Pinus).

Another use for the three-leaved bundles was simmering them for a drink regarded efficacious for treating sore throats arising from colds and even for consumption. The aborigines in what is now Connecticut steeped the bark and took the solution internally in the belief that it eased cold symptoms. The bark was also crushed into a poultice for piles and ulcers, as well as boiled to make a potion for bringing boils to a head. Some Indians just soaked the bark of this eastern white pine and, as soon as it was soft, used it on sores of all sorts.

The cambium of saplings, though, they boiled for drinking to quell dysentery. A drink made of the steeped buds was held to be laxative. The Indians and settlers made poultices by simmering the scrubbed roots of these evergreens.

The amber-colored resin seeping and solidifying from the pines was plastered over parts where there was muscular soreness, as after games or hard work and from arthritis. This resin, easily picked and scraped from the trees where it exuded prolifically from cuts and lacerations, is brittle at first but soon chews into a soft and pleasantly flavored pink gum which had many uses: sweetening the breath, increasing or quickening menstrual flow, treating kidney disorders and tuberculosis, smearing on the body to ease localized swellings, curing itching and even ulcers, and internally for treating sore throats.

The colonists dissolved it in brandies and other alcoholic beverages to wash inflammations, itchy spots, scalds, and burns.

This resin, found on all the pines, was heated and smeared on the chest for pneumonia, for helping rheumatism and muscular soreness, for bringing boils to a climax, for taking the soreness and inflammation out of wounds and cuts, and even for treating annoying mosquito and other insect bites.

One tribe burned and damped pine wood to charcoal, encompassed this in a wet cloth or strip of deerskin, and tried the whole around the throat for laryngitis.

Pine oil and tar was widely used as a disinfectant, insecticide, antiseptic, parasiticidal agent, expectorant, and deodorant; a number of these uses it still enjoys in modern times.

The tips of the dense, scalelike foliage of the arborvitae, so important in vitamins, were used for gout, fever, and lingering coughs. Half an ounce of the young leaves, steeped or soaked overnight in a cup of water, then sipped a tablespoon at a time, was relied on by some to produce menstruation, as well as to increase the flow of urine. Externally, it was used in an effort to eradicate wars and to cure athlete’s food and ringworm.

Then there is the piñon. Indians in New Mexico simmered its needles in water, added sugar to the decoction, and tood it internally as a remedy for syphilis. Whether or not this had any beneficial effect, there are definitive reports from Department of Agriculture scientists that just a 100-gram portion of the pleasant little nuts boasts 635 calories, 60.5 grams of fat, 20.5 of carbohydrates, 13 of protein, in addition to a great 604 milligrams of phosphorus, 5.2 of iorn, 4.5 of niacin, 1.28 of thiamine, and 0.23 of riboflavin, all in a medically important, pleasantly piquant package.

Poke (Phytolacca)

Family: Pokeweed (Phytolaccaceae)

Common Names: Pokeweed, Pokeberry, Virginia Poke, Poke Root, Pocan, Pocan Bush, Scoke, Skoke, Caokum, Coakum, Cucum, Cokan, Inkberry, Red-Ink Plant, Redwood, Red Wood, Garget, Pigeonberry, Chongras, Jalap, American Nightshade.

Characteristics: The ripe, deeply purple, reddish purple, or orangish purple berries, growing in racemes some 4 to 7 inches in length (each fruit being a bit more than ¼ inch in diameter) has a red juice that was one of the first natural inks of the New World, so enduring that it is still to be seen in museums. They also produce multitudes of bright, long, black seeds. Birds become intoxicated when eating these berries—another distinctive sign.

Beside the withered remains of the former season’s plants spring the fat young sprouts that, up to some 7 inches in height, are the only part of the plant that, unless used very carefully, is not poisonous. The shoots proved so popular to the first mariners and explorers in the New World that they took the sprouts back to Europe, where they were equally regarded as delicious.

The mature, then poisonous stalks take on a purplish hue in place of the lush, appealing greenness of the young plants. The annuals mature into roundish stalks that soar upward for some 3 to 9 feet. They have multitudinous, tiny, greenish white flowers which grow on long, fat separate stems in lengthy clusters. The leaves, known botanically as ovate-lanceolate, grow in the form of rather stout lance heads with individual stems at their bases and sharp points at their tips. Scattered except for a little cluster at the top, and sometimes other small clusters on the stalks, they are some 10 inches in length. The leaves, smooth both top and bottom, have slightly undulating rims.

All in all, the perennials are plump and strong-smelling, not at all difficult to recognize.

Area: The poke, native to tropical America and a hearty perennial especially in the South, now is common in the eastern part of the country except along the Canadian border, west to Minnesota and the Lone Star State of Texas, southward through Mexico.

Uses: First, it should be reemphasized that except for the stout young shoots which grow to some 6 to 7 inches high, and the leaves growing from these sprouts, poke can be very harmful if not used with extreme caution. As for the shoots, they are so popular that they are regularly grown domestically, in such places as cellars, and they are sold in some grocery stores. Cut off just where they emerge from the ground, they are cooked like asparagus, rich in vitamin C.

Poke (Phytolacca).

The large, poisonous roots used to be collected in the fall by the pharmaceutical industry, as affirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and utilized in small portions as an emetic, for which it was favored because of its slow and harmless behavior, and for treating arthritis. The poisonous berries contain a strong laxative. The Indians and colonists, using those roots, mainly cut them into small pieces and steeped a level tablespoonful with 2 cups of boiling water, then dosed themselves sparingly by the tablespoon. The roots, like the berries, also have a narcotic action.

The poke’s major medicinal component is said to parallel the action of cortisone in stimulating the complete glandular network, which would account for its help with rheumatism, for one thing. But, again, caution was always the governing principle.

Poke was believed to be extremely useful as an alternative, perhaps the most effective in this respect of all wild medicinals; that is, a drug used empirically to alter favorably the course of an ailment. For this purpose, a tea prepared by steeping a tablespoon of the cut root or ripe berries with 2 cups of boiling water was taken by the tablespoonful.

The dried root is still used in Appalachia, according to the Department of Agriculture, for the treatment of hemorrhoids. The dried berries are used in some regions as poultices to bring boils and other sores to a head.

A number of tinctures and ointments have also been made of this powerful medicinal and used to reduce glandular swelling and to help chronic arthritis and stiffness of the joints. It was also regarded by some as being efficacious externally in such skin diseases as scrofula, eczema, and even syphilis. A decoction made from the roots was washed over the skin to do away with itching. Apparently it could be applied externally as often as necessary without undue risk, and it was believed to be very helpful in reducing such annoyances.

A number of tribes used the cut roots on the soles and palms of Indians suffering with fever, and the pioneers followed suit. The fresh leaves were made into poultices for scabs of long standing. They were also dried for application to swellings, ulcers, carbuncles, and wounds of one sort or another.

Pusley (Portulaca oleracea)

Family: Purslane (Portulacaceae)

Common Names: Purslane, Low Pigweed, Purslance.

Characteristics: The earth-embracing pusley, whose shoots seldom stretch more than an inch or two toward heaven, is a sprawling annual whose stems and tendrils creep over many a yard where, spurned by most as a lowly weed, it does not usually gain the attention it should, since it is unusually rich in medically important minerals and vitamins. Native and widely used in Persia and India long before the birth of Christ, it spread early to Europe and was one of the plants widely adopted by the Indians after its immigration to the New World with the first settlers. It spread quickly and widely because of its profusion of tiny seeds, well more than 50,000 having been counted on a single plant.

The corpulent, narrow, paddlelike, ½- to 2-inch-long leaves, growing almost opposite, prosper in rosettes lifting from fleshy, forking stems. Each disk of leaves, which have a lovely reddish to regal purplish green tinge to them, centers a tiny golden medallion of a flower which reveals itself only in warm, bright sunlight. These stemless delicacies have some five to seven yellow petals and about eleven elegant stamens that mature into small round pods whose tops lift off like crowns when the tiny seeds are ready to be revealed.

Area: Preferring as it does sandy fertile soil, pusley reigns from the balmier provinces of Canada throughout the continent to each of our southern states.

Uses: As a medicine, pusley is important because of the fact that, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture tests, a 100-gram portion has been found—despite the fact that it is more than 92 percent water raw and more than 94 percent water following boiling—to boast 2,500 international units of vitamin A raw and 2,100 cooked, 0.1 milligram of riboflavin raw and 0.06 simmered and drained, 25 milligrams of vitamin C raw, and a robust 3.5 milligrams of iron. Although the Indians did not know of vitamins and minerals, any more than did the colonists, they recognized the health-giving qualities of pusley, and where we once lived in Taos several of the women in the towering pueblo there canned quantities each year to give to their growing families.

The seeds, which U.S. government scientists have found will stay alive in the ground for more than forty years until moisture comes along to start their growth, were made into a tea by the Indians, who also used the tender stems and tips for the same purpose, to bring about relaxation and sleep.

Pusley (Portulaca oleracea).

Pusley tea had many uses among the American aborigines who, of course, passed along their particular findings to the Europeans who, knowing some of the virtues of the wild medicinal from the Old World, had been using it particularly for lightning and gunpowder burns.

The Indians found the decoctions useful in cases of gout, for reducing agitation and nervousness just as we use sedatives today, for gonorrhea, as a diuretic, for headaches, particularly those arising from exposure to the sun and weather, and for stomach, intestinal, and liver ailments.

The decoctions, not made so potent as usual, were considered mild enough to be safe in killing intestinal worms in children. Brewed stronger, it was considered effective for adults with the same problem.

The juice, gained by crushing and straining the plant, was stirred into wild honey for a cough medicine. It was also used externally as is for bathing inflammed generative organs. Mixed with oil, sometimes that rendered from grizzly fat, it was rubbed into stiff necks. It also seemed to help piles, used both internally and externally, the latter particularly when the ailment caused soreness of the skin.

Mixing it with wild honey or with maple sugar was claimed to help shortness of breath and immoderate thirstiness except when this arose from diabetes.

Bathing the body with cool, crushed pusley was resorted to in cases of fever and, less critically, for inflammation.

The multitudinous small black seeds, which the Indians and hungry pioneers crushed, sieved, and used for flour, were steeped for tea which some of the tribes looked to for help with painful urination, as a bath for eye irritations, and for stomach trouble. Boiled in wine, it was given in small doses to children to kill and pass worms.

Juice from the crushed and strained plant, used externally, was esteemed many centuries ago for ulcers and other sores in the generative parts, for inflammations in general, for soaking compresses which were laid where the head ached, for easing other aches and pains, for gout and fever, for trouble with the genitourinary organs and functions, and as a generally accepted antiseptic.

Sassafras (Sassafras)

Family: Laurel (Lauraceae)

Common Names: Saxifrix, Saxifras, White Sassafras, Red Sassafras, Common Sassafras, Silk Sassafras, Tea Tree, Mitten Tree, Gumbo, Cinnamonwood, Smelling Stick, Saloop.

Characteristics: Christopher Columbus is said to have been helped in his successful efforts to quell mutinous seamen, who feared to sail any farther westward, by the sudden sweet smell of the sassafras tree, which indicated the nearness of land. Sassafras even exceeded tobacco during the early days as a North American export to Europe. In fact, special ships were carrying cargoes of sassafras from this continent back to the Old World before any other New World product made an impression on medicine there.

The distinctive and agreeably aromatic odor and flavor of this small- to medium-sized tree, varying in height from about 10 to nearly 50 feet, is as pleasant as it is characteristic. Even the roughly furrowed grayish to reddish brown bark has this fragrance both in taste and smell. The leaves, which unfurl before the golden greenish blossoms appear in latter April and early May, are of three shapes even on the same tree—a thumbed mitten, a three-fingered glove, and a smooth egg shape. The spiceness of darkly blue, one-seeded berries, up to about ½ inch in diameter but mostly of pea size, attract birds to the female trees in the autumn when they mature on their reddish stalks.

Area: The majority of our sassafras trees grow from Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, southern Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, south to Texas and Florida, thriving mainly along roads and fences, in thickets on the edges of woods, and within pastures and cleared lands which have been deserted.

Uses: Wine made from sassafras berries was frequently imbibed for colds. During the flowering period from March to April, the blossoms were simmered to make a tea to lessen fevers. An old-fashioned idea, still adhered to in many parts of the country, is that the blood should be thinned and purified in the spring, and among the roots used to prepare brews for this were and are those of the sassafras.

Also, a tea made of the root bark is still utilized in Appalachia for such general and varied purposes as to increase the flow of urine, to treat kidney troubles, to ease the discomfiture of a gassy and upset stomach, to produce an increase in perspiration, to help dysentery, and to relieve respiratory troubles. About two centuries ago the tea was believed to slow the milk flow in nursing mothers when this seemed expedient. The tea has also been used as a stimulant and for the treatment of bronchitis.

The bark has been made into a poultice for sore eyes. Pioneers thought that chewing it would help break the tobacco habit, a problem even then.

Sassafras (Sassafras).

Jesuit priest Paul Le Jeune who lived among the Iroquois in the middle of the seventeenth century said that sassafras leaves, pounded together and laid on wounds of all kinds, would heal most of them in short order.

Other early Europeans spoke of beating the bark of the root and using it to cleanse ulcers; also of applying it to swellings or contusions to ease the pain and to heal the parts. It was generally used along the eastern seaboard as an ointment for bruises. The leaves were chewed and laid on wounds to stop bleeding. Teas made from the sassafras were thought beneficial in the treatment of venereal diseases. Even years ago, the roots were distilled to make an oil for flavoring beverages such as ginger ale, sarasaparilla, cream soda, and root beer, as well as toothpaste and the like. It was used in such concoctions as Kickapoo Oil, featured at old-time medicine shows. The bark was favored as an insect repellent. Tea made from it was thought to be effective in helping the passage of gravel and kidney stones.

The fragrant and mucilaginous southern soups which have varied little since Indian times still are considered by many to be very healthful and beneficial.

The Rappahannocks made a tea from sassafras roots to bring out the rash to reduce fever in measles—a disease which in modern times has been determined to be much more dangerous than was previously thought.

The Catawbas showed the white man how to treat lameness by abrading the spot where the lameness lay, bathing it both during and after the bleeding with warm water, then drying some sassafras roots in the coals of a campfire, scraping off the thus-loosened bark, pounding it well between two smooth stones, spreading it over the afflicted part, and bandaging it there for several days, after which the patient was often adjudged cured.

One way to making sassafras tea was to put two roots, each a couple of inches long, in 3 pints of water, first scrubbing the roots vigorously with a stiff brush, rinsing them, and then scraping away the bark, which was included with the roots in a pot. Bring this to a boil, then reduce the heat, simmer for fifteen minutes, and finally remove from the heat, cover, steep for ten minutes, strain, and serve. Another dosage, especially used as a spring tonic, was made by cutting or grinding a teaspoon of the bark, steeping this in a cup of boiling water for ten minutes, then drinking cold, a few sips at a time, throughout the day. Still another formula called for dropping several roots into a quart of bubbling water, setting this off the heat, and steeping five minutes.

Or, you can use the entire root, first scrubbing and cutting it into pieces that will easily fit into a pot holding a gallon of water. A pound of roots will thus make 4 quarts of tea and can be used several times before they lose their strength. Merely simmer until the tea has a yellowish red hue, a rich smell, and a pleasing taste. Then you can treat it like Oriental tea, drinking it as is, or thinning with milk or cream and, if you wish, sweetening it.

Some scientists have been warning lately that the sipping of sassafras as a spring tonic is, like the alleged cumulative dangers of cranberries and Red Dye No. 2, dangerous to the health. But it has been added that the Red Dye No. 2 which proved dangerous to laboratory mice would have to be consumed at a rate of 1,200 pounds per day to pose a threat to human beings. Perhaps this proves that using sassafras tea to put spring into your spring is one of the few age-old customs that bureaucrats shouldn’t mess with.

Sassafras was also used to make a mouth-wash, held to be as beneficial as many of the commercial products now on the market.

Slippery Elm (Ulmusfulva)

Family: Elm (Ulmaceae)

Common Names: Elm, Indian Elm, Moose Elm, Rock Elm, Soft Elm, Sweet Elm, Red Elm, Tawny Elm, Gray Elm, American Tree.

Characteristics: The important slippery elm is a medium-sized tree, ordinarily about 60 to 70 feet high, and well known for centuries to many a youngster who has chewed its alluring mucilaginous and aromatic bark. The twigs, too, have the same qualities. The medicinal variety does best in rich soil, especially if the soil is impregnated with limestone, along stream banks, river terraces, flood plains, and bottomlands. However, it is also to be found on occasion in dry and poor sites. The slippery and pleasantly fragrant inner bark, once smelled and sampled, is unforgettable.

The rough and abruptly toothed leaves, intensely and darkly dull green on top, as well as somewhat abrasive—soft, fluffy, and lighter colored below—grow from brief, fuzzy, obese stems. Unfurling from downy, stubby, dully pointed, ovoid buds that in winter are an especially deep brown, the oblong to ovate, simple and alternate leaves, doubly serrated on the margins, are generally an uneven 4 to 7 or 8 inches in length and from 2 to 3 inches wide. The buds at the branch ends ordinarily have orange tips.

Interestingly, the slippery elm leaves, with their straight parallel veins from the midribs, are scratchy when rubbed either back or forth, while those of their cousin elms are scratchy only in one direction. In autumn they take on a rich golden hue with oxidation, not frost. The branches stretch out into wide, airy, relatively smooth and even crowns; hence this is one of America’s most popular shade and decorative trees.

Small, greenish flowers in short-stacked assemblages enhance the slippery elm from February to April. They mature into winged seeds, dispersed from April to June by the winds, that are samaroid—that is, they resemble the small, dry, winged, seedlike fruits of the maples (considered elsewhere in this book). There are an average of 2,500 slippery elm seeds per ounce, the range being from 2,180 to an astonishing 3,370. The commercial age bearing of this elm’s seeds is from 15 to 200 years, those in the open usually bringing these forth earlier and more abundantly than those in stands.

Slippery elm (Ulmus fulva).

Area: Slippery elms, still regarded as extremely valuable medicinals in Appalachia, are distributed from the Canada—United States St. Lawrence River to the Dakotas, south to the Lone Star State of Texas, east along the Gulf of Mexico to Florida.

Uses: In Appalachia people still soak the inner bark of this tree in warm water to produce a mucilage that is used as a protective, as a soothing agent for an abraded mucous membrane, as an alleviative substance, too, for injured skin, and for healing wounds. There and elsewhere a tea made by steeping a teaspoon of the powdered inner bark to a cup of boiling water, still, as it did back in pre-Columbian times, provides a laxative. Softening the skin, this still is also believed to help prevent chapping.

The Indians mashed the bark and used the pulp both for gunshot wounds and to ease the painful removal of the lead. Poultices made from such bark has been lightly pressed over burns to assist in keeping them antiseptic and to hasten their healing. The Indians, as they showed the settlers, also used it to help infections concerned with the lungs and their allied channels and organs. It was another of the wild medicines relied on for diarrhea.

Tea brewed from the roots was trusted to assist pregnant women at the time of their giving birth. In fact, the slipperiness of the bark, or of the sap and juice, was depended on by midwives to ease the births themselves. Indeed, it was considered useful when anything had to be expelled from the body, even phlegm, when this viscid mucus became secreted in abnormal quantities in the respiratory passages.

Soaking from 1 to 2 ounces of the inner bark in 2 cups of water kept below the boiling point for at least an hour, preferably longer, then straining it, gave an extract that had many uses—for enemas, diluted for vaginal douches, and in small sips for digestive troubles. When it came to enemas for constipation, some wholesome oil and warm milk were often also combined with the decoction.

The powdered inner bark was often the major ingredient in suppositories. For the sick and convalescent the powdered and apparently easily digestible product was frequently flavored with honey or maple syrup and eaten as a strengthening gruel, a practice still often followed in some backwoods communities with the present-day common addition of cinnamon or nutmeg.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica)

Family: Nettle (Urticaceae)

Common Names: Nettle, Ground Nettle, Forest Nettle, Slender Nettle, Dwarf Nettle, Great Nettle.

Characteristics: These perennials, notable for their stinging qualities which disappear, however, after they have been simmered slightly, are generally single-stalked greens that are among the first to appear in snowy regions in the springtime. Filled with chlorophyll, vitamin C, many indispensable trace minerals, and protein, nettles, being some 7 percent nitrogen on a dry-weight count, are wealthier in this essential plant food than some commercial fertilizers. Where they luxuriate, there is rich, fertile ground.

Area: Nettles grow across the northern portions of the continent, south through Canada and much of the United States.

Uses: Nettles can be amply cooked with only the water clinging to the plants when they are washed free of dust, and none of this should be wasted because of human-health reasons. In fact, a pleasant beverage is thus provided which the colonists believed helped the pains, aches, and twinges of those growing old. The entire food, one of the most palatable greens nature has to offer, was at one time thought to be a potent medicinal, good for a wide variety of ills—diabetes, fever marked by paroxysms of recurring chills and fever and perspiring, asthma, bronchitis, poor blood, consumption, bites and stings of poisonous pests, and even as a poison antidote. It was also believed valuable in weight-losing. Incidentally, only the tender tips of young plants or those not more than a foot tall should be used.

In addition to its high vitamin C content, which wards off scurvy, for which it is particularly valuable in the Far North after the long white winter, the stinging nettle is rich in vitamin A, which assists night vision, gives a sparkle to the eyes, and makes the hair more glossy. In this latter connection, applied several times daily as a hair tonic, it had the reputation of lessening falling hair, reducing dandruff, and helping bring about a generally healthy scalp.

The stalks, the stems of the leaves, and the leaves themselves bristle with a fine stinging fuzz in which formic acid is a major irritant. They are best gathered with knife or scissors and disposable paper bags, with one’s hands protected by impermeable leather, rubber, or plastic gloves. Indians, not having these, counteracted the resulting itch both with crushed green dock leaves and with the rusty feltlike sheathes of young ferns.

Stinging nettle (Urtica).

Slim, lengthy, branched, inconspicuous bunches of small verdant blossoms grow rather late in the summer in some localities, in angles between stalks and leaf stems.

The juice from the simmered greens was believed to kill and expel worms in children, to aid diarrhea, to help purify blood as a spring tonic, to increase the flow of urine, and to act as an astringent. Claims were made for its checking hemorrhaging of the lungs, bowels, and kidneys. Stirred into a small portion of honey, this decoction gained the reputation of helping to relieve asthma, of mitigating bronchitis, and of soothing coughs.

In efforts to stop nosebleeds, pressing a leaf against the root of the mouth with the tongue was said to be effective. Crushed nettles were also stuffed sparingly into the nostrils for the same reason.

Stinging nettles were widely used as an agent applied locally to produce superficial inflammation with the object of reducing inflammation in deeper adjacent regions. For instance, stinging the skin with nettles was used in treating arthritis. They were believed helpful in stanching wounds. Ground nettles were important to the nomadic Indians for treating numb feet. In all such cases, the innumerable little injections of formic acid may have been a helpful factor. Striking paralyzed limbs with nettles was credited many times with restoring healthier circulation and even movement. Neuralgia and rheumatism were also treated with heated poultices of the crushed leaves.

The flowers and seeds of stinging nettles were gathered and put in wine, then later drunk for ague. A sweetened preserve of the flowers and seeds was given for kidney stones. Wine in which nettle leaves had been soaked was also resorted to in some instances for starting menses.

Nettle roots were boiled and the decoction used as a mouthwash or gargle, as a bath for painful parts such as those caused by rheumatism, and for saturating compresses for application to both new wounds as well as old and festering sores. It was taken internally for jaundice. Mixed with honey and dry sugar, it was used to assist the expulsion of matter from the lungs and throat by causing coughing and expectorating, thereby also helping to cure wheezing and shortness of breath.

Tansy (Tancetum vulgare)

Family: Compositae (Compositae)

Common Names: Common Tansy, Double Tansy, Bachelor’s Buttons, Bitter Buttons, Golden Buttons, Yellow Buttons, English Cost, Ginger Plant, Stinking Willie, Scented Fern, Parsley Fern, Hind Heal, Hindheal.

Characteristics: The perennial tansy grows in clumps of erect, unbranched stems 2 to 3 feet high. It has pungent, strongly aromatic, fernlike foliage, some 4 inches wide and about 7 inches long, with jagged, toothed leaflets. Its flowers, green and inconspicuous, top the handsomely hardy plant and develop from July to September into clustering heads of flat, round, tubular, buttonlike, organish yellow flowers that live several weeks and then dry into a dark golden beauty.

Area: Tansy grows throughout much of Canada and the United States.

Uses: Tanacetin oil, distilled from tansy, has been used as an insect repellent. Taken internally in an effort to induce abortion, it has sometimes proved to be fatal. Toxic to man and animals when eaten, tansy concoctions taken internally had to be used sparingly and with great caution. The flowering tops were also employed to make a tea to promote menstruation.

In small doses the decoctions of the blossoms and leaves were used to kill and expel worms, as a tonic and narcotic both, as a stomachic to strengthen the digestive system and to increase appetite, for inducing perspiration on the dry skin of fever patients, to quiet hysteria, to assist convalescents in regaining strength, to encourage sleepiness, to help in kidney disturbances, to cleanse the lower intestines, for a number of female complaints, to help gallbladder sufferers, and even for jaundice.

It was also used as a substitute for pepper, in the making of the liqueur chartreuse, and sparingly, because of its strong aroma, to flavor such dishes as salads and omelets.

The plants were once hung in colonial kitchens to dry for such usages and also to help keep away insects. They were also strewn on floors for the latter reason.

Applied externally to sexual organs, tansy was reputed to aid fertility. Decoctions were applied to skin eruptions and sores. The tender young leaves, soaked in buttermilk for about ten days, provided a skin lotion. Infusions of the plant were used for bruises, sprains, sore muscles, arthritic conditions, as a bath to cool feverish patients, and as a general liniment.

Crushed leaves were used as poultices for everything from sprains and contusions to stomachache. They were bound around many an Indian head for headache. The Catawbas relied on the authoritatively aromatic tansy in steam baths for sore, bruised, and swollen feet, ankles, and lower legs.

Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).

Walnut (Juglans)

Family: Walnut (Juglandaceae)

Common Names: Black Walnut, Common Black Walnut, Walnut Tree, American Walnut, Eastern Black Walnut, Texas Walnut, California Walnut, Nogal.

Characteristics: Particularly valuable for its wood, which is used for paneling and furniture, and for its nuts, the native walnut is a strong, straight, stately tree, averaging between 50 and 100 feet in height and sometimes soaring to as much as 150 feet, with a tightly knit trunk some 2 to 5 feet in diameter. Nogales, where Arizona borders Mexico, has taken its name from the Spanish word for walnuts, nogal. The dark brown, nearly black bark is divided into rounded dullish ridges by deep, slim furrows.

The stems are topped with a single leaf, the other alternative leaflets growing opposite one another, some dozen to twenty-two a branch. They give off a distinctive spicy odor when crushed between the fingers. Sharply tipped and finely toothed, formed something like slim arrowheads, they vary from a few to 2 dozen inches in length. Green, with often a yellow tinge on top, they are more lightly colored and generally hairy beneath.

Frequently mistaken for its close relative the butternut, walnuts have light tan pitch, whereas the butternut emits a dark brown, viscous substance. A hairy fringe is found about the leaf scars of the butternut, whereas none occurs on its cousin.

The roundish walnuts mature to from 1 ½ to about 3 inches in diameter by the time they are ready to drop from the broadly spreading branches about October, depending on the locality. Then the difficulty is getting off the thick, fleshy, warty, greenish husk—a job calling for waterproof gloves unless you don’t mind staining your hands with a long-lasting brown dye. A knife is frequently used for the task, which the pioneers found easier if the damp walnuts were first spread in the sun until they became drier.

In turn, the at first wettish nuts underneath, each encased in its familiar sculptured bony shell, were also kept in the sunlight for a few days to dry and to lose some of their bitterness before being channeled open, or split into two halves with a thumbnail, to reveal their deeply indented, definitely delectable, four-celled nuts.

Area: Half of the world’s dozen species of Juglans are native to the United States. They grow throughout a large part of the East and into the prairie states. A pair of different walnuts exists in California and another pair, growing up to more than a mile in altitude, elsewhere in the Southwest. Many walnuts are planted as shade trees.

Uses: Walnut meats boast a rugged 628 calories per 100 grams, as revealed by U.S. Department of Agriculture tests, which have shown this portion to have over 20 beneficial grams of protein, over 59 of fat, and almost 15 of carbohydrates. The same healthily edible volume was found to harbor phosphorus, 460 milligrams of potassium, 300 international units of the eye-benefiting vitamin A, 22 milligrams of thiamine, 0.7 of niacin, and 0.11 of riboflavin.

Walnut (Juglans).

The Apaches used the juice of the hulls to divest their horses and cattle of such parasites as lice. It was also believed effective in ridding any wounds of maggots. Dogs were wormed with 1 or 2 tablespoonfuls. For humans, the same long-lasting juice was rubbed into graying hair to make it brown. Aside from this cosmetic use, the juice was thought helpful for passing intestinal worms in human beings and for treating ulcers, boils, carbuncles, syphilis, as well as ringworm and fungus infections. It was also believed to be a medicine for diphtheria. The same juice of the green husks was simmered with honey for use as a soothing gargle and cough syrup, as well as for irritated stomachs.

The depressant characteristic of the crushed green hulls was long ago evidenced by their now illegal and unsporting use, except in survival situations, in stupefying fish for easy catching by hand, their use then for eating not being at all impaired.

The bark of the trees was both boiled and steeped in bubbling water to make a wash that the Indians believed lessened the aches and pains of arthritis. This bark is very astringent.

The inner bark of the tree, the cambium which lies between the outer bark and the wood, was boiled for use as a physic, its immediacy depending on its strength. The inner bark of the root was also so used, especially for dysentery where it seemed to work mainly as a cleansing laxative. It was also gathered in the fall and so used as a cathartic. Furthermore, it was regarded as a remedy when, as was fashionable in colonial America, one felt “liverish.”

A leaf infusion is still used in Appalachia both as an astringent and as a remedy against bedbugs.

The oil extracted from the ripe kernels—by boiling them in water, skimming the oil from the top, and then drying the nuts for eating—was adjudged good for colic. It was also believed that it helped in the expelling of tapeworms. This oil used to be recommended as a palliative for various skin troubles.

Wild Clover (Trifolium)

Family: Pea (Leguminosae)

Common Names: Common Clover, Common Red Clover, Red Clover, Purple Clover, Purple Prairie Clover, White Clover, White Sweet Clover, Yellow Clover, Yellow Sweet Clover, Strawberry Clover, Sweet Clover, Prairie Clover, Meadow Clover, White Prairie Clover, Foothill Clover, Ditch Clover, Longstalk Clover, Broadleaved Clover, Pinpoint Clover, Bighead Clover, Clammy Clover, Hop Clover, Low Hop-Clover, Smaller Hop-Clover, Large Hop Clover, Buffalo Clover, Rabbitfoot Clover, Cow Clover, Tomcat Clover, Tick Clover, Beggar’s Ticks, Tick Trefoil, Clever Grass, Trefoil, Bee-Bread, Fourleaf Clover.

Characteristics: There are a number of different species of this plant on this continent, but everyone knows the common varieties, mainly those with red, white, and occasionally yellow blossoms—everyone, that is, who has ever successfully sought as a youngster the so-called lucky four-leaved oddities among the vast stretches of trefoil masses of green foliage or who has sucked honey from one of the individual minute tubelike flowers forming the fragrant heads.

Red clover, T. pratense, is the official flower of the New England State of Vermont. It is a biennial or perennial legume with long-stemmed, trifoliate leaves, each ordinarily with three oval-shaped leaflets. The globular to ovate flower heads are dense and roseate.

White clover, T. repens, is selected by many a home owner for his lawn, as, being a low, white-flowered, creeping perennial with glabrous runners and usually long-stemmed leaves, it does not need constant mowing. Bread made from its seed-replete dried flowers, being healthful and nourishing, has saved peoples from starvation.

Too, clover is widely known as an important food crop for all kinds of livestock at every time of the year, whether green or dry. It attracts large numbers of bumblebees, which serve to fertilize it, the genus not being successful in Australia until bees were brought in, too.

Areas: Clovers, some of them going wild from introduced species, prosper in all sorts of conditions and soils throughout much of the United States and Canada.

Uses: The red clovers, known by a number of different common names, depending on the locality, are regarded as antispasmodics, good for nervous indigestion and allied troubles. The flowers have been used therapeutically also as an expectorant, sedative, and for healing wounds and sores.

An ointment was made from them for spreading over ulcers, and a poultice made by crushing a handful of blossoms and steeping them in a small amount of water for four hours, then putting the mixture on while it was still warm. It is also soothing to irritated mucous membranes, and therefore is used for coughs. For youngsters, rashes were washed with a strong decoction of the flowers and water.

Wild clover (Trifolium).

In fact, a syrup was made for whooping cough by simmering 2 ounces of blossoms to a quart of thick sticky solution of sugar and water, straining and then sipping this several times daily, especially when the coughing became particularly irritating.

The dried and ground flowers of the red clover were, according to the U.S. Dispensatory, used in some antiasthma cigarettes. Tea brewed from the flowers was also used to improve sluggish appetites, regulate digestive functions, and to treat liver ailments.

The blossoms of both the red and white clovers had the reputation of being blood purifiers and a strong tea steeped from them individually was applied externally to boils, ulcers, and other skin disorders. They were also drunk to cleanse the system and were furthermore taken as alternatives.

Some of the Indians ate the tender young leaves, especially raw but also sparingly simmered to prevent and cure scurvy, characterized by such symptoms as roughening of the skin, congestion about the hair follicles, large bruiselike areas of hemorrhaging, pain in the joints and muscles, and often swelling of the joints.

Wild Onion (Allium)

Family: Lily (Liliaceae)

Common Names: Nodding Onion, Nodding Wild Onion, Sickle-Leaved Onion, Swamp Onion, Marsh Onion, Tree Onion, Shortstyle Onion, Sierra Onion, Sierra Garlic, Wild Garlic, Eastern Wild Garlic, Meadow Garlic, Field Garlic, Siberian Garlic, Wild Chive, Wild Leak.

Characteristics: The one thing to watch out for is to use only those plants and bulbs that have the familiar odor and flavor of the onion family. None are poisonous. However, some domestic and wild plants, and bulbs especially, have an onionlike appearance only and are among the most insidious poisons in the plant world although, because of familiarity with them as flowers, you and children particularly may regard them as edible. Beware of them and keep them out of youngsters’ reach as much as possible—admittedly a difficult thing to do in gardens. But try to drill into them the fact that all parts of such plants should be left strictly alone, and keep them out of reach when they are not in the ground.

The typical wild onion has slim, awllike, often hollow leaves similar to those of the vegetable garden species. Underground, it is a layered bulb with a distinctive odor and taste. Flowers appear at the tops of otherwise naked stems.

There are, as always, exceptions. With the Allium canadense or eastern wild garlic or meadow garlic, bulbs grow at the top. When Père Jacques Marquette, seventeenth-century Jesuit missionary and explorer, went from Wisconsin in 1674 to the present vicinity of Chicago, he and his party existed mainly on wild onions, likely this species. In the Menominee language, the word Cigaga-Wuni (to spell it phonetically) was the name of the wild leek, A. tricoccum, or skunk place, the first part of which name was given this region where so many of these plants thrived and were also probably eaten by the Marquette party.

The continent-crossing expedition of Rogers and Clark was introduced to the wild medicinals by the Indians, there being some fifty varieties in the Rocky Mountain region alone.

Wild onion (Allium).

Area: These numerous, pungent members of the lily family—the wild onions, leeks, chives, scallions, shallots, and garlics—grow throughout North America except in the land of the permafrost in the Arctic and Far North. The withered stems and seedpods of a number of the varieties stick up above the winter snows and indicate the presence of usable bulbs in the ground below.

Uses: For centuries, according to no less an authority than the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a medicinal oil has been extracted from the A. sativum, or wild garlic, and has been used to treat such ailments as bronchitis. The crushed bulbs were made into a poultice applied to the chest of those suffering from pneumonia.

The old people among the Indians and the settlers were brought up making cough syrups by cooking the sliced bulbs and dissolving the juice into some sweetness which might well have been maple sugar. Such syrup was used to treat cold symptoms and to help such afflicted children drift off to sleep. The same syrup was also used to attack hives.

Incidentally, the odor which is repellent to many people after someone has been eating garlic and the like can easily be eradicated. Just brushing the teeth, tongue, and gums thoroughly, so that no bits of the medicinal remains, will leave a fresh-smelling mouth.

These wild medicinals have long been what often seemed to be a miraculous cure for scurvy. When Maximilian, Prince of Wied, was weak with the vitamin deficiency at Fort Clark in 1834, it was the Indians who got the green leaves and bulbs of wild garlic (A. reticulatum), which cured him when his plight seemed hopeless. On Major Stephen Long’s large expedition to the Rockies in 1819 and 1820, 300 of his men were laid low with scurvy, a third of them fatally, and it was likely the wild garlic brought in by the Indians which saved the remainder. On General George Crook’s so-called Starvation March down the Yellowstone River in 1876, wild onions were credited with helping the men avoid scurvy.

The Cheyennes were among the Indians crushing the bulbs and stems of wild garlic, applying this as a poultice to carbuncles and boils, and then, when the sore burst or was opened, washing out the pus with a strong tea simmered from the same medicinal.

The Dakotas and the Winnebagos were among the Indians who crushed the wild onion and applied it to bee, wasp, hornet, and other insect bites with what was said to have been marked success in reducing the swelling and pain. Some Indians used it in an effort to draw the poison out of snakebites.

Many of the early Americans, both Indians and pioneers, simmered the juice of the wild onion family down to a heavy syrup which was used for coughs, tickling throats, and other cold symptoms. Some of the Indians and settlers used the juice expressed from roasted wild onions and wild garlic for infants with croup. Wild onion poultices are so used in parts of Appalachia today. The juice was also dropped in

to the ear to relieve aching and the ringing noise that individuals sometimes notice.

Crushed members of the family were applied to scalds and burns, even those caused from too much exposure to ultraviolet rays, as well as to sores and even unsightly blemishes. It was also said to help digestion, to keep away disease germs in some instances, and to aid piles and hemorrhoids. The Indians and sourdoughs moistened clean, heavily steam-sterilized sphagnum moss, which covers thousands of miles of our continental North, with wild onion juice diluted with sterile water for antiseptic applications to wounds and suppurating sores.

The meadow garlic, A. canadense, has been used to rid the digestive system of gas, to increase the flow of urine, and to help patients relieve their respiratory systems of phlegm. Other members of the wild onion family have also been so utilized.

Water in which sliced or crushed wild onions had been steeped for at least twelve hours was drunk on empty stomachs to rid the system of worms.

Willow (Salix)

Family: Willow (Salicaceae)

Common Names: White Willow, European White Willow, Snow Willow, Black Willow, Pussy Willow, Swamp Willow, Blue Willow, Shining Willow, Canada Willow, Quebec Willow, Prairie Willow, Tall Prairie Willow, Coastal Plain Willow, Weeping Willow, Drummond’s Willow, Glaucous Willow, Glossy Willow, Crack Willow, Sandbar Willow, Silky Willow.

Characteristics: The above is only a sampling of the names, for some 200 to 300 willows grow throughout the world, depending on which school of thought the botantist who is doing the counting follows; at least a third of them grow in this country. They range from large attractive trees, to shrubs and bushes, to small shoots in the Arctic and mountains, which are important for many times being at first spring source of vitamin C and, incidentally, of plant food, Being seen most frequently near water, they also grow in lofty stony country.

Particularly when some species become snowy with the widely known pussy willows, which I’ve seen growing from beaver houses on still-frozen ponds, it is not hard to recognize them, especially as most varieties have narrow and long smooth or toothed leaves, or oblong lancelike leaves, with short stems. Partly because they are the first growth to leaf in the springtime, they are the favorite browse of moose and other members of the deer family.

To pick a few individual species, the black willow, S. nigra, is the largest American willow, stretching 50 and sometimes nearly 100 feet high in damp bottomlands and along water, although some remain bushes. The branches are reddish, smooth, brittle where they leave the trunks, which lift largely in clumps. The fruits are narrow, vaselike, closed receptacles containing innumerable silky tufted seeds which run approximately 150,000 to the ounce, one reason why they are so widely spread through New Brunswick west to Ontario and South Dakota, south to Texas.

The sandbar willow (S. interior), on the other hand, is a shrub from some 1 to nearly 3 yards tall, growing in thickets on sand and gravel along streams and other spots where there is often flooding. Again, the branchlets are reddish and mostly smooth. The characteristic willow leaves are narrowly lancelike, sharp-tipped at either end, and smoothly green on both sides and sometimes silky silver, growing on extremely short stalks. They grow from the Maritimes to gold-panning Alaska, south to Maryland and New Mexico.

Willow (Salix).

Area: As can be surmised, the willow family grows in quantity in Canada and the United States from the Arctic to Mexico.

Uses: The bitterness in the leaves and the thin inner bark of the majority of the willows comes from salicylic acid, which gives the common aspirin its own bitterness, making this general species one of natures’s most important natural gifts to mankind. The North American Indians soon discovered that tea decocted and steeped from the cambium of the majority of the willows (a very few of the shoots turn out to be sweet when eaten for nourishment and vitamin C—a fact which makes them more palatable but less important medically) was important for arthritis and for reducing fever and many pains—this centuries before the isolation and marketing of the drug aspirin. In fact, the willow’s name of Salix comes from salicylic acid.

The ashes of burned willow twigs were blended with water and used for gonorrhea. Willow roots were powdered with stones and turned to in an effort to dry up sores resulting from syphilis. The settlers joined the Indians in using potent teas brewed from the thin cambium or inner bark of the bitter willows to treat venereal diseases.

The dried and powdered bitter bark, astringent and detergent, was applied to the navels of newly born babies. It was utilized to stop severe bleeding, as were the crushed young green leaves, the bark, and the seeds, also stuffed up the nostrils to stop bad nosebleeds. These were also used for toothache, the salicin in them here being the important component. They were steeped in water or wine as a dandruff controller and preventative.

Some tribes turned to the simmered bark and roots of the black willow, S. nigra, for weakness and lack of vigor that they attributed to poor blood. The inner bark of the black willow was brewed into a strong tea for keeping moist compresses over ulcers and gangrene.

The Mohicans were among the Indians soaking the inner bark of the red willow (S. lucida), to get bile out of the stomach and allow vomiting. The Chickasaws used the roots this way and for nosebleeds, as well as in small amounts for headache. Some of the Indians of New England used a weaker solution of the scraped bark of the red willow for cold symptoms and smoked the scraped and cut cambium for asthma. Other Indians, the settlers following, steeped the bark of the Red Willow and imbibed it for headache and lumbago.

To fend off fevers, the Creeks washed themselves in a boiled solution of the roots. Some crushed the bark and bandaged it around the head to ease headaches. The Ojibwas turned to the inner bark for external use on wounds and sores; other tribes to check bleeding—a use also made of the root bark of the pussy willow, S. discolor, as well as other willows. Some bands utilized root tea in an enema for severe diarrhea.

As if all this were not enough, the roots were used to kill and expel worms. Willow tea was used by the drop to relieve inflamed eyes.

The settlers soon adopted the Indian practice of steeping willow roots for spring tonic, adjudged all the better for being bitter. And some tried many of the tribes’ use of pussy willow catkins as an aphrodisiac.

Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Family: Witch Hazel (Hamamelidaceae)

Common Names: Common Witch Hazel, Wych Hazel, Southern Witch Hazel, Eastern Witch Hazel, White Hazel, Snapping Hazel, Snapping Hazel-Nut, Hamamelia, Spotted Alder, Striped Alder, Tobacco Wood, Wood Tobacco, Winterbloom, Pistachio, Long Boughs.

Characteristics: The plant has nothing to do with witches. The usual name is derived from an Old English word meaning “pliable” and related to “weak,” not exactly a comedown when one considers that although the medicine is an official drug, there has never been any complete agreement as to its efficiency despite the fact that the public buys it by the millions of gallons.

Witch hazel is a crooked tree or shrub, usually 8 to 15 feet tall, although it sometimes reaches 25 feet in height. The twisting stem and long, forking branches with brown, smooth bark are characteristic, as is the balsamic fragrance of the bruised parts. It produces new shoots from the base. A peculiar feature, except in the springflowering species, is the late appearance of the threadlike, yellow flowers, their not appearing until late in the autumn or in the early winter after the leaves, smooth above and paler and smooth or almost so beneath, have fallen.

As for the urnlike, downy seed capsule, this does not mature until the following season, when it bursts open, scattering the shining, hard, black seeds with great force and to a considerable distance. These grow from a two-celled ovary, composed of a pair of pistils united below, forming a double-beaked, two-celled woody capsule, the one ovule suspended from the apex of each chamber becoming a bony entity. There are eight stamens, half of them perfect and the other half scalelike and sterile.

The twigs are mostly hairy, bearing the fruits in long clusters. The leaves are simple, 3 to 5 inches long, thick, scalloped along their margins, with an obtuse apex and curved to a tapering base, roundish to round-oval, borne on short stalks. Both the twigs and the buds are rough with a rusty or tawny pubescence.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana).

Area: Used in landscaping and growing in moist light woods and along rocky banks and streams throughout most of the United States except in the Far West, this North American plant thrives especially from the Maritimes and Quebec to Florida, westward to Minnesota and Texas.

Uses: The twigs, leaves, and bark are all used to prepare witch hazel extract, which has been used for everything from shaving lotions and vaginal douches to treating contusions, sprains, insect bites, and piles. The fresh leaves especially contain a high concentration of tannin which make them very astringent. Indians taught the settlers to apply them to bruises and swellings.

The tannin, gallic acid, and the volatile oils are strongly hemostatic, and therefore a tea steeped from the leaves and bark has long been considered effective for bleeding in the stomach, as for ulcers, and in an enema for inwardly bleeding piles. The Iroquois also used a tea made from the steeped leaves, sweetened to taste with maple sugar, as both a pleasant and beneficial tea with meals. One recipe for the tea was a teaspoonful of the granulated or finely chopped leaves and bark added to a cup of bubbling water and steeped for five minutes. It was believed, incidentally, that the oils were more potent if the components were gathered in the late autumn and winter.

Compresses and bandages, kept wet with witch hazel, were applied to varicose veins and to burns, rashes, skin irritations, and infections. A small amount of alcohol was often added if available, and a steam extract from the twigs was what was often used. Cold compresses were also used for headaches and for sore and inflamed eyes. A decoction prepared from the inner bark was considered by many Indians as being especially efficacious for bathing the eyes.

The entire moistened herb was spread over hot rocks in enclosed places and water poured atop it for steam baths, which were believed to bring about speedy relief from feverish colds, catarrah, coughing, and abnormally heavy phlegm discharges.

The extract was used in massages for overexertion and muscular strain, for arthritis, and for general conditioning. It was applied manually, sometimes with a bit of moistened cotton, to insect bites, hemorrhoids, scalds, burns, and swellings.

Witch hazel was also relied upon as a rinse and gargle for irritated throats, sore gums, cankers, and general mouth irritations.

When one was traveling where water was scant, he often chewed the bark, which was first bitter and astringent but left a pleasantly lingering sweetish, pungent taste.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Family: Compositae (Compositae)

Common Names: Common Yarrow, Milfoil, Knight’s Milfoil, Milfoil Thousand-Leaf, Soldier’s Woundwort, Soldier’s Wound-Wort, Bloodwort, Sanguinary, Nosebleed, Devil’s Plaything, Green Arrow, Thousand-Leaf, Thousand-Seal, Thousand-Leaved Clover, Gordaldo, Gordoloba, Cammock, Old Man’s Pepper, Carpenter Grass, Carpenter’s Grass, Dog Daisy, Woolly Yarrow.

Characteristics: Once smelled, the aromatically lacy foliage and flat-topped terminal flowers of the yarrow will ever after be recognized. The almost always white blossoms are very rarely yellow and even more occasionally purple. They are small, developing in spring and summer into sometimes convex clusters. The complex leaves are made up of very small entities on small stems branching off of single stalks. Growing alternately, they are also many times clustered at the bottom of the usually less than 3-foot-high central stems. Finely dissected, they are linear to narrow-spatulate or lanceolate. The foliage as a whole often seems grayish from numerous small hairs.

Gathered in the late summer of early fall, many still scent the cabins where they are hung high to dry for later use.

Yarrow is widely known in England as tansy, an entirely different important medicinal plant here in the New World (covered elsewhere in this volume).

Area: The fragrant lacy and distinctive plants from coast to coast over most of Canada and the United States.

Uses: Yarrow roots are still the traditionally used local anesthetic of many of the western Indians, as revealed by two cases recorded by the Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Yarrow
(Achillea millefolium).

One involved a Nevada Indian who was suffering acutely from a deep thigh wound in which foreign substances had entered the cut. Fresh, scrubbed yarrow roots were crushed to a soft spongy mass and applied gently to the spot. Within half an hour the anesthetic had so dulled the pain that it was possible to expand and clean the wound. The second concerned a deeply sunk splinter that, following soaking in a solution of yarrow roots, was similarly opened and removed. This was accomplished by members of the family.

Not only fresh poultices, but washes in which the leaves and stems were also sometimes boiled were used in similar cases after battles and accidents. The entire plant was often reduced to a paste, spread over newly set fractures, and bound in place with fresh dandelion leaves or sterilized cloths.

The yarrow had the additional quality of acting as a coagulant and therefore was used for everything from a gashed toe to a speartorn side. The leaves of the yarrow, steeped in water, thus became in numerous regions the most commonly employed herb to stem the flow of blood. They were even soaked and stuffed up the nostrils to quell nosebleed.

Yarrow poultices were resorted to for common bruises and abrasions. In cases of burns and scalds, yarrow was crushed as between two smooth rocks, combined with water, and spread over the injury before perhaps wild onions were bruised, salted, and applied both in an effort to withdraw the heat and to prevent blistering.

The styptic characteristics of the yarrow were resorted to for all kinds of nicks and cuts, even those from the pioneer’s razor. The leaves were even reported to heal inflammations, eczema, rashes, infections, and the like.

Yarrow tea was applied to sore nipples. Boiled yarrow leaves were used as a wash for eyes irritated from dust, glare, and snow blindness. It was tried in eruptions such as those arising from measles and chicken pox. Swellings were bathed in the tea, as were regions irritated by poison ivy and poison oak and by general itching. It was a natural wash for fevers.

Bits from freshly cut yarrow roots were inserted in aching tooth cavities. It was even believed that the constant chewing of yarrow root or continual applications of root tea would kill the nerve of an ulcerated tooth.

Indians suffering from the gout took decoctions of yarrow. It was turned to for sciatica. It was resorted to for neuralgia. The Chicakasaws took an infusion of yarrow for cramps in the neck. It was given warm as a soothing agent in cases of hysteria. It was used to combat tuberculosis.

Yarrow was even used in attempted abortions. Dr. Charles F. Millspaugh reported in his 1892 book on Medicinal Plants that the use of yarrow was no more limited to the Indians than the age-old practice of abortion elsewhere in the world. The dosage suggested was 10 drops or more of the oil of the herb. The doctor recorded that yarrow was “one of the most frequently used abortives among ignorant people—not so dangerous generally as that following the use of nutmeg but very often serious.” Too, yarrow tea, made from fresh leaves, was widely favored for suppressed menstruation.

Some of the tribes resorted to a yarrow poultice for spider bites, and, of course, after the sucking of the wound, it was used for poisonous snakebites.

The leaves of the yarrow were also favored for fevers. Hot yarrow tea, made from the dried leaves, was sought to induce perspiring, regarded as effective in breaking a fever. This was also used for chills. The feverish patient was bathed, too, in cold yarrow tea . . .

A poultice of bruised yarrow leaves was laid or bound over the forehead for headaches.

A weak brew of the entire plant was pressed into service as an astringent gargle and mouth-wash. It was believed to be successful as a vaginal douche for leukorrhea. Indians injected it as an enema for hemorrhoids. It was generally relied on to adjust malfunction of the kidney, liver, and the genitourinary systems. Even today, yarrow is steeped in an effort to help a diseased condition in the stomach and intestinal system.

A small amount of the roots or preferably the whole plant was steeped in a small amount of water as a tonic for someone who was run down. A chilled infusion was recommended for convalescents. It was, as might have been suspected, another of the spring tonics. Tea made from the plant was given twice daily as a blood builder following childbirth.

The entire plant, including the roots, was boiled and taken mornings and nights to help one retain his strength during a cold. In fact, the chewing of yarrow root was supposed to help break up a cold.

Yarrow baths were favored for arthritis, and a solution served as a favored liniment for overexerted joints and muscles.

Leaves were soaked and a wad of them pressed into an aching or infected ear. The juice dropped into the eys was believed to stop redness and inflammation.

The dried and powdered herb was steeped with plantain tea to stem internal bleeding.

Generally, the herb is an aromatic with diaphoretic and emmenagogue activity that seemed to work out well as a general vulnerary. Leaves of both the common yarrow (A. millefolium), and the woolly yarrow (A. lanulosaw), were picked for numerous difficulties with the reproductive organs.

An ointment for wounds was made by blending yarrow leaves with a pure edible lard such as those made from wild-animal fat.

Yucca (Yucca)

Family: Lily (Liliaceae)

Common Names: Datil Yucca, Broad-Leaved Yucca, Spanish Bayonet, Spanish Dagger, Dagger Plant, Date Fruit, Datil, Soap Weed, Soapweed, Small Soapweed, Bear Grass, Joshua Tree, Our Lord’s Candle, Adam’s Needle, Eve’s Darning Needle.

Characteristics: Not really a cactus, the yucca nevertheless grows in desert and desertlike areas and includes the well-known Joshua tree, which soars up to some 40 feet in height and has leaves up to about 7 inches long.

There are two general types of yucca—one with fleshy, moist fruit and the other with dry fruit, both at maturity. They produce big, flat-tish, black, wind-carried seeds in abundance that are freed by the splitting of the ripened ovaries.

The Spanish bayonet, Yucca baccata, grows with ferociously pointed, stiff, obese leaves from about 1 to 4 feet long. They do not bloom annually, but when this happens pyramidical, loosely branched flower clusters arise from the mass of daggerlike leaves—2 or 3 feet long and some 2 inches wide, with a few coarse fibers wavering from their edges—with many white or creamy, bell-like, fleshy blossoms that can be shredded and enjoyed in salads. The big, pulpy, seed-filled fruit of those that are left mature into a some 3- to 6-inch-long delicacy that resembles a stubby banana, good roasted and peeled while still somewhat green, which can mature into a blackish purple or somewhat yellowish sweet, thick, adhesive, and sticky delicacy that the Spanish Americans use like a date.

The flowers are generally numerous each spring. However, successful pollination carried on by small yucca moths, that often remain in the closed blooms all day and do not visit the stigmas of surrounding plants until darkness, is not annually successful.

Area: The various yucca grow on dry plains and rocky slopes from California to South Dakota, Montana, and Kansas, to Maryland and Tennessee, south to Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico.

Uses: Soapy and detergentlike suds result from the agitation of the roots with water, which was and still is in some regions used medicinally for cleaning purposes and for externally arising skin eruptions, rashes, and other such disorders, as well as for ulcers that have proved difficult to heal. The saponin ingredient responsible for this does not have the usual acrid flavor nor the sneeze-arousing qualities of other saponins. It is good for general skin care and for abrasions and the like. Some particularly seek it for healthful shampooing.

The pounded roots of the Joshua tree, Y. brevifolia, used to be boiled in water to provide a tea taken internally for gonorrhea. The fruit of this tree has been used as an emetic.

Yucca (Yucca).

Yucca leaves contain salicylic acid, and therefore teas brewed from them have the same arthritis-helping, headache- and muscular-pain-relieving, and temperature-reducing qualities of aspirin.

The fruit of the datil yucca (Y. baccata) is reportedly laxative to a certain degree, especially if one is not used to it.

—From Field Guide to Medicinal Plants

Poisonous Plants

U.S. Army

Successful use of plants in a survival situation depends on positive identification. Knowing poisonous plants is as important to a survivor as knowing edible plants. Knowing the poisonous plants will help you avoid sustaining injuries from them.

How Plants Poison

Plants generally poison by—

• Ingestion. When a person eats a part of a poisonous plant.

• Contact. When a person makes contact with a poisonous plant that causes any type of skin irritation or dermatitis.

• Absorption or inhalation. When a person either absorbs the poison through the skin or inhales it into the respiratory system.

Plant poisoning ranges from minor irritation to death. A common question asked is, “How poisonous is this plant?” It is difficult to say how poisonous plants are because—

• Some plants require contact with a large amount of the plant before noticing any adverse reaction while others will cause death with only a small amount.

• Every plant will vary in the amount of toxins it contains due to different growing conditions and slight variations in subspecies.

• Every person has a different level of resistance to toxic substances.

• Some persons may be more sensitive to a particular plant.

Some common misconceptions about poisonous plants are—

• Watch the animals and eat what they eat. Most of the time this statement is true, but some animals can eat plants that are poisonous to humans.

• Boil the plant in water and any poisons will be removed. Boiling removes many poisons, but not all.

• Plants with a red color are poisonous. Some plants that are red are poisonous, but not all.

The point is there is no one rule to aid in identifying poisonous plants. You must make an effort to learn as much about them as possible.

All About Plants

It is to your benefit to learn as much about plants as possible. Many poisonous plants look like their edible relatives or like other edible plants. For example, poison hemlock appears very similar to wild carrot. Certain plants are safe to eat in certain seasons or stages of growth and poisonous in other stages. For example, the leaves of the pokeweed are edible when it first starts to grow, but it soon becomes poisonous. You can eat some plants and their fruits only when they are ripe. For example, the ripe fruit of mayapple is edible, but all other parts and the green fruit are poisonous. Some plants contain both edible and poisonous parts; potatoes and tomatoes are common plant foods, but their green parts are poisonous.

Some plants become toxic after wilting. For example, when the black cherry starts to wilt, hydrocyanic acid develops. Specific preparation methods make some plants edible that are poisonous raw. You can eat the thinly sliced and thoroughly dried corms (drying may take a year) of the jack-in-the-pulpit, but they are poisonous if not thoroughly dried.

Learn to identify and use plants before a survival situation. Some sources of information about plants are pamphlets, books, films, nature trails, botanical gardens, local markets, and local natives. Gather and cross-reference information from as many sources as possible, because many sources will not contain all the information needed.

Rules for Avoiding Poisonous Plants

Your best policy is to be able to look at a plant and identify it with absolute certainty and to know its uses or dangers. Many times this is not possible. If you have little or no knowledge of the local vegetation, use the rules to select plants for the “Universal Edibility Test.” Remember, avoid—

• All mushrooms. Mushroom identification is very difficult and must be precise, even more so than with other plants. Some mushrooms cause death very quickly. Some mushrooms have no known antidote. Two general types of mushroom poisoning are gastrointestinal and central nervous system.

• Contact with or touching plants unnecessarily.

Contact Dermatitis

Contact dermatitis from plants will usually cause the most trouble in the field. The effects may be persistent, spread by scratching, and are particularly dangerous if there is contact in or around the eyes.

The principal toxin of these plants is usually an oil that gets on the skin upon contact with the plant. The oil can also get on equipment and then infect whoever touches the equipment. Never burn a contact poisonous plant because the smoke may be as harmful as the plant. There is a greater danger of being affected when overheated and sweating. The infection may be local or it may spread over the body.

Symptoms may take from a few hours to several days to appear. Signs and symptoms can include burning, reddening, itching, swelling, and blisters.

When you first contact the poisonous plants or the first symptoms appear, try to remove the oil by washing with soap and cold water. If water is not available, wipe your skin repeatedly with dirt or sand. Do not use dirt if blisters have developed. The dirt may break open the blisters and leave the body open to infection. After you have removed the oil, dry the area. You can wash with a tannic acid solution and crush and rub jewelweed on the affected area to treat plant-caused rashes. You can make tannic acid from oak bark.

Poisonous plants that cause contact dermatitis are—

• Cowhage.

• Poison ivy.

• Poison oak.

• Poison sumac.

• Rengas tree.

• Trumpet vine.

Ingestion Poisoning

Ingestion poisoning can be very serious and could lead to death very quickly. Do not eat any plant unless you have positively identified it first. Keep a log of all plants eaten.

Signs and symptoms of ingestion poisoning can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, depressed heartbeat and respiration, headaches, hallucinations, dry mouth, unconsciousness, coma, and death.

If you suspect plant poisoning, try to remove the poisonous material from the victim’s mouth and stomach as soon as possible. Induce vomiting by tickling the back of his throat or by giving him warm saltwater, if he is conscious. Dilute the poison by administering large quantities of water or milk, if he is conscious.

The following plants can cause ingestion poisoning if eaten:

POISON SUMAC, IVY, AND OAK

William Carey Grimm

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)

Caution: All parts of this plant contain a dangerous skin irritant.

Field marks. A shrub or small tree 4 to about 15 feet high; growing in swamps, bogs, and other wet places. Branchlets moderately stout, smooth, the end bud present. Leaves alternate, compound, 6 to 12 inches long; the 7 to 13 leaflets short-stalked, elliptic or egg-shaped, broadly pointed at base, pointed at tip, margin untoothed, rather lustrous above, paler beneath, smooth, 2 to 4 inches long; leafstalks usually reddish. Flowers small, greenish, in axillary clusters; blooming May to July. Fruits roundish, smooth, waxy white, about 3/16 inch in diameter, in rather loose and drooping clusters; ripening August or September and persisting.

Range. Southwestern Maine to Ontario and Minnesota, south to Florida and Texas.

Poison-Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans)

Caution: All parts of this plant contain a dangerous skin irritant.

Field marks. An erect or trailing leaf-losing shrub, or a woody vine climbing by means of aerial rootlets on the stems; growing in wooded areas, thickets, clearings, or along fence rows and roadsides. Leaves alternate, long-stalked, compound, 4 to 12 inches long; the 3 leaflets oval or egg-shaped, rounded or broadly pointed at base, pointed at tip, usually with a few coarse teeth on margin, often lustrous above, paler and slightly downy beneath, 1 ½ to 8 inches long; the end leaflet rather long-stalked, the side ones almost stalkless. Flowers small, yellowish green, in axillary clusters; blooming May to July. Fruits roundish, waxy white, about 3/16 inch in diameter; maturing August to October and persisting.

Range. Nova Scotia to British Columbia; south to Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

Poison-Oak (Toxicodendron pubescens)

Caution: All parts of this plant contain a dangerous skin irritant.

Field marks. A stiffly erect, simple or sparingly branched, leaf-losing shrub 1 to 2 ½ feet high; growing in dry sandy pine and oak woods and clearings. Leaves alternate, long-stalked, compound, 3 to 8 inches long; the 3 leaflets often broadly egg-shaped, pointed at base, blunt at tip, with 3 to 7 often deep lobes, somewhat downy above, more densely so and paler beneath, 2 to 5 inches long; the end leaflet rather long-stalked, the side ones almost stalkless; leafstalks downy. Flowers and fruits similar to those of Poison-ivy but usually more downy.

Range. Chiefly coastal plain; New Jersey and Maryland south to Florida; Tennessee to eastern Oklahoma south to Alabama and Texas.

—From The Illustrated Book of Wildflowers and Shrubs

Poison sumac.

Poison-ivy.

Poison-oak.

Trumpet vine or trumpet creeper*.

• Castor bean.

• Chinaberry.

• Death camas.

• Lantana.

• Manchineel.

• Oleander.

• Pangi.

• Physic nut.

• Poison and water hemlocks.

• Rosary pea.

• Strychnine tree.

—From Survival (Field Manual 21–76)

Chinaberry*.

* by William Carey Grimm, from The Illustrated Guide to Wildflowers and Shrubs

* by William Carey Grimm, from The Illustrated Guide to Trees

Castor bean (castor oil plant).

Cowhage.

Physic nut.

Pangi.

Water hemlock.

Mushrooms

C. Leonard Fergus and Charles Fergus

A mushroom, no matter its shape or color or size, is a fruiting body of an organism known as a fungus (plural, fungi). The fungi have an entire kingdom to themselves in the taxonomic system, separate from the plants. While resembling plants in their immobility, fungi lack the green pigment chlorophyll and obtain essential carbon compounds not by manufacturing them, as plants do through photosynthesis, but by gleaning them from living or dead matter. Fungi break down and consume plants: grasses, leaves, wood, fruit, and other plant parts. The fungi—which include molds, yeasts, smuts, and mildews—are key decomposers of vegetation, and without them, life on earth would be utterly different than we know it.

In the past, people thought mushrooms emerged spontaneously out of rotting matter or grew where lightning struck the ground. Not until the eighteenth century did humans discover that fungi exist as hyphae, strands of living tissue that spread through square yards or even acres of earth. We see their gossamer filaments when we turn over a clump of rotten leaves, dig in the upper layers of the soil, or break apart an old log. In the soil, fungal hyphae often infiltrate the fine outer rootlets of trees, helping the trees take in minerals and other nutrients by linking them to the vast network of fungal filaments. Some trees cannot survive without their mycorrhizal (myco for fungi, rhizal for root) partners. In return, the fungi receive carbon compounds that the trees make through photosynthesis. This symbiotic relationship explains why many fungi are found in forests.

Some mushrooms fruit in “fairy rings,” so named because people once believed that fairies danced around the rings and sat on the mushrooms to rest. Fairy rings mark the outer edge of an underground fungus. The rings often show up in open areas such as fields and lawns, increasing in diameter each year as the fungal hyphae use up nutrients in the soil and expand outward. Some rings are hundreds of years old and cover several acres.

When the hyphae from two fungi of the same species meet, they may combine their genetic material and, when conditions are right, send forth mushrooms. Mushrooms are to fungi as apples are to apple trees. Because the underground or otherwise hidden fungus needs moisture to produce its fruit, mushrooms often appear two or three days after a soaking rain. Perhaps another reason that mushrooms arise during damp periods is that rain is often followed by dry, breezy conditions, perfect for the dissemination of mushroom spores.

Spores are analogous to the seeds in apples, except that spores are microscopic (most consist of a single cell) and are produced in mind-boggling numbers. Elio Schaechter, in his lively book In the Company of Mushrooms: A Biologist’s Tale, writes: “A middle-sized mushroom with a four-inch cap may produce on the order of 20 billion spores over a period of four to six days, at a rate of some 100 million per hour.” Depending on the shape and structure of the mushroom, its spores are ejected from between gills, trickle down through pores, waft away from branching structures, or come puffing out of bladders. Wind disperses the spores, sometimes carrying them for many miles. The spores land on the ground or on wood, where they form filaments that grow to become new fungi.

The color of a mushroom’s spores is an important aid in identifying a fungus species. My father recommended placing a mushroom cap, minus its stem, on a combination of black and white paper, covering it with a jar or cup, and waiting an hour or so for a spore print to form: the print visible against either the white background or the black, depending on spore color. Other authorities suggest making spore prints on glass, then scraping the spores together with a knife blade to determine the color. Or one can make a spore print on transparent plastic, which can be held up against different-colored backgrounds to ascertain spore color.

Collecting mushrooms is a popular hobby. Although some fungi are edible, others are poisonous, and there are no hard and fast rules or tests by which a poisonous type can safely be discerned, other than by correctly identifying it. My father was fond of the saying “There are old mushroom hunters and bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.” Fortunately, most of the poisonous species are not fatal to people who ingest them: they bring on symptoms that resemble food poisoning, including nausea, cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea, lasting one or more days. Some mushrooms cause hallucinations. In general, the faster such symptoms show up, the less severe the ultimate outcome. Some mushrooms, however, deal death. On page 149, see “Destroying Angel,” an essay I wrote some years ago, included here as a cautionary.

A friend of mine recently became enthusiastic about mushroom hunting. He equipped himself with several field guides and headed into the woods. Later he confided to me, “You really can’t tell if something is a horse or an ass just from pictures in a book.” He stressed the importance of collecting with a trustworthy tutor having close knowledge of the local fungi. I was lucky; my tutor was a professor of mycology. One can also get help from mycological societies and mushroom clubs (over a hundred in North America), and some schools and universities offer courses in mushroom identification.

To safely eat wild mushrooms, stick to easily identifiable ones that have no poisonous look-alikes. My father recommended what he called the “Foolproof Five”: Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus), Morels or Sponge Mushrooms (Morchella species), Sulphur Shelf or Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus), Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus), and Giant Puffball (Calvatia gigantea).

The following precautions are in addition to those my father listed in his text:

• Thoroughly cook all mushrooms before eating.

• When trying a mushroom for the first time, eat only a small amount (remember, only eat one type of mushroom at a time). Save an uncooked specimen in the refrigerator for at least forty-eight hours; if symptoms develop, a mycologist can identify the mushroom, helpful to a doctor trying to treat any illness.

• Avoid feeding mushrooms to children, sick people, and the elderly, who are generally more susceptible to toxins than healthy adults.

• Do not pick mushrooms in contaminated places such as dumps, roadsides, industrial sites, and lawns and fields treated with pesticides. Some mushrooms concentrate environmental toxins.

You don’t have to eat mushrooms to enjoy seeking and identifying them. Mushroom hunting is a great excuse to get out into the fields and forests, and learning about the lives of fungi opens up a new understanding of nature’s cycles.

—Charles Fergus, Port Matilda, PA

Important Parts of Mushrooms

C. Leonard Fergus and Charles Fergus

This book is intended as a basic guide for persons untrained in mycology who wish to identify the common mushrooms that seem to appear from nowhere each year in lawns, fields, and woods. In order to separate harmless and edible species from poisonous kinds, the observer must be able to recognize certain important parts of mushrooms. These parts—some with their scientific as well as their common names—are presented with the drawing below and in the following list:

Guide to parts of mushrooms.

Annulus. The remnants of the partial veil, useful in the identification of certain mushrooms. See ring.

Bulb. A swelling at the base of the stem.

Cap. The expanded and often flattened part, usually at the top of a mushroom’s stem. The underside of the cap bears the sporedis-pensing gills, pores, or teeth. See pileus.

Convex. Rounded or regularly elevated toward the center; used in describing the caps of certain mushrooms.

Cup. The scales or sheath seen at the base of the stem in some mushrooms. The cup is the remnant of the universal veil that completely encloses the developing mushroom at first, but is ultimately broken and left at the base, usually partly underground. See universal veil and volva.

Flesh. The inner substance of the stem or cap, exclusive of the external layer and of gills, pores, or teeth.

Gills. Leaflike plates on the undersurface of the cap. See also pores, teeth, and tubes.

Lateral. Attached to one side of the cap; used in describing the stems of some mushrooms.

Partial veil. A membrane that extends from the unopened margin of a mushroom cap to the stalk, protecting the developing gills.

Pileus. The cap portion of a mushroom, which bears gills, pores, or teeth on the lower side. See cap.

Pores. The openings at the ends of the tubes of certain mushrooms, visible on the undersurface of the cap.

Ring. The remnants of the partial veil on the stems of certain mushrooms. It usually encircles the stem and is therefore called a ring. See annulus.

Scale. A more or less raised portion of the outer, skinlike layer of the cap.

Spores. Tiny reproductive bodies of mushrooms, akin to the seeds of plants.

Stem. Stalk supporting the cap of a mushroom.

Stuffed. Said of the stem on some mushrooms, when the interior is filled with a material different from and usually softer than the outer part.

Teeth. Thornlike or spinelike structures on the undersurface of the caps or branches of certain mushrooms.

Tubes. Tubular or pipelike structures arranged vertically in the caps of certain mushrooms. Seen only when the cap is cut through.

Universal veil. A membrane surrounding the young developing mushroom in some species. See cup and volva.

Umbo. A raised knob in the middle of a mushroom’s cap.

Volva. The cuplike structure surrounding the bases of some mushrooms, and a key identification mark for several poisonous species. See cup.

Some Common Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northeast

C. Leonard Fergus

Many species of fungi grow wild in eastern North America. With their sudden and bizarre appearance, rapid growth, striking colors, and possible use as food, mushrooms interest people of diverse ages and backgrounds. Mushrooms also are excellent objects for nature study and matchless photographic subjects.

As sources of food, wild mushrooms may be divided into those known to be dangerously poisonous, slightly poisonous, suspected, disagreeable in taste, edible but of mediocre quality, and of excellent flavor. The possibility of individual variable allergic reactions to mushrooms, just as to eggs and strawberries, must also be considered.

In this publication an attempt is made to describe, by means of text and photographs, some of the common edible mushrooms found in this region. Poisonous species are included so that collectors may know when and where to expect to find them and thus avoid them.

According to estimates, several thousand kinds of fungi appear in the Northeast. It is beyond the scope of this publication to consider them all. Obviously, the collector will encounter many mushrooms not included, since only forty-three are described. However, the ones included are quite common and will be found more frequently than the ratio would indicate.

The mushrooms described herein have been selected for various reasons. First, each possesses characteristics so distinctive that the average person may quickly learn to know them. Second, of the edible mushrooms listed, only those are included that have no suspicious history. Third, they are quite common, having been collected many times, in many places, year after year.

No rules are known by which an inexperienced person can distinguish poisonous from edible mushrooms. To be safe, a collector must be able to recognize edible species just as he or she recognizes a violet or a rose. The edibility of many of our wild mushrooms still is not known. One cannot tell by looking at any plant whether it is poisonous or not. Keep in mind that the only way to determine if a plant is poisonous is for someone to have been poisoned by it after eating it, and the same is true for mushrooms.

The following important precautions should be rigidly observed:

• Do not eat any mushroom that you cannot definitely identify and that has not been recorded as edible.

• Do not eat any mushroom just because it is not recognizable as of a poisonous species.

• Never eat a mushroom that is beginning to discolor or deteriorate, or that has been partially devoured or invaded by insects.

• Be sure to dig up the entire mushroom so that all underground parts will be collected. Never eat a mushroom that has both a cup (volva) at the base of the stem and a ring (annulus) around the upper part of the stem.

• Do not mix the mushrooms that you find. Sort them carefully, and keep each collection separate. Use coffee cans, paper bags, or waxed paper parcels; plastic bags trap moisture, leading to deterioration.

• Be extremely careful in the identification of any mushroom that has a white spore print or is in the early stage of development (button stage). At this time, certain important identifying characteristics will not yet be discernible. If in doubt about the identity of a specimen and the fruiting body is a gilled mushroom, a spore print should be made unless positive determination of the color of the expelled spores en masse is possible from the ground or debris at the time of collection. Spores are very small and are visible to the naked eye only when massed in large numbers. To make a spore print, always select a mature specimen. Cut the stem off flush with the gills and lay the cap, gills down, partly on white paper and partly on black paper. Cover this arrangement with a jar or cup so that air currents will not disrupt the spores and the mushroom will not dry out too rapidly. A spore print should become evident in one to two hours. You can determine the spore color as white, rosy or pink, yellow- to rusty-brown, dark brown or purple-brown, or black. Spore prints are beautiful. They may be used for decoration if sprayed with a fixative, such as a clear lacquer available at an arts and crafts store.

• If necessary, or if it is discovered that a poisonous fungus has been eaten, induce vomiting immediately and call your doctor or Poison Control Center.

Aids in Identification

A key in mycology is simply a specialized shortcut to positive identification. In the identification of mushrooms, one choice after another is eliminated until there is left but a single one to which the mushroom at hand can be assigned. The use of a key demands continual choosing: either the mushroom at hand does or does not exhibit a certain characteristic. When using a key, great care must be taken in making the various choices.

Let us select Pleurotus ostreatus, the Oyster Mushroom, as an example and attempt to key it down, using the key presented on page 148. Start with choice 1 in the key. The specimen is a mushroom with gills on the underside of the cap; hence, move to choice 2. Does it have a ring on the stem or not? It does not; move to choice 5. The gills or cap do not exude a milky juice when broken, so move to choice 6. Is the spore print white or black? Since it is white, go to choice 8. The gills are sharp-edged; therefore, move to choice 9. The stem is lateral: thus, the mushroom is classified in the genus Pleurotus or the very closely related genus Hypsizygus. Turn to the pages on which those mushrooms are described and compare your specimens with the text descriptions and photographs. If they agree, you know you have collected Pleurotus ostreatus. If the description of that species does not coincide closely with your specimen, or if you cannot find a name in the key of a mushroom that agrees with your find, you probably have collected a mushroom not included in this publication. You should discard such a collection unless you have available more complete and detailed mushroom books.

The mushrooms are described in the text in the same order as they are presented in the key.

Each description of a mushroom includes color, size, presence or absence of a ring (annulus) and a cup (volva), presence of gills or pores or teeth, locations or habitats where the species commonly occurs, substratum on which it usually grows (soil, rotting wood, etc.), season in which it usually appears, and other items of interest. Many mushrooms develop only in certain months, whereas others appear throughout the growing season. Weather influences the time when mushrooms fruit. In general, the broadest range of species and the greatest number of mushrooms emerge from late summer into early or mid-fall.

Joining a mushroom club is one of the best ways to learn how to identify wild mushrooms. Two particular organizations are of great help to amateur mushroom collectors and can offer information about local mushroom clubs. They are the North American Mycological Association (www.namyco.org), at 6615 Tudor Court, Gladstone, Oregon 97027-1032, and the Northeast Mycological Federation (www.nemf.org), at 141 River Road, Millington, New Jersey 07946-1303.

It’s also a good idea to find the phone number of the local Poison Control Center and have it handy before you need it. The emergency phone number of the American Association of Poison Control Centers is 1-800-222-1222.

KEY TO SOME COMMON EDIBLE AND POISONOUS MUSHROOMS

1. Mushrooms with gills on underside of cap

2. Mushrooms with ring on the stem

3. Mushrooms with volva at base of stem

. . . Amanita

3. Mushrooms without volva

4. Purple-brown spore print

. . . Agaricus, Psathyrella, Hypholoma

4. White or green spore print

. . . Armillaria, Macrolepiota, Chlorophyllum, Lepiota

2. Mushrooms without ring

5. Gills or cap exuding a milky juice if broken

. . . Lactarius

5. Without milky juice

6. Spore print black

7. Gills and cap dissolve at maturity into black ink

. . . Coprinus

7. Gills dark-spotted and do not dissolve into ink

. . . Panaeolus

6. Spore print white

8. Gills blunt and thick on edge and usually united in a network

. . . Cantharellus

8. Gills sharp-edged

9. Stem lateral

. . . Pleurotus, Hypsizygus

9. Stem central

10. Gills running down the stem

. . . Omphalotus

10. Gills not running down the stem

11. Edge of gills like saw-teeth

. . . Lentinus

11. Edge of gills not saw-toothed

12. Stem tough-brittle, breaking with a snap

. . . Oudesmansiella, Flammulina

12. Stem fleshy-fibrous, not breaking with a snap

. . . Lepista

1. Mushrooms without gills

13. Mushrooms with many small pores on the underside of the cap

14. Stem central and unbranched

. . . Boletus, Leccinum, Suillus, Strobilomyces

14. Stem absent or lateral or branched multiple times

. . . Fistulina, Grifola, Laetiporus

13. Mushrooms without pores

15. Fungi with teeth or spines on the pileus

. . . Hericium, Hydnum

15. Fungi without teeth or spines

16. Mushroom coral-shaped or club-shaped or funnel-shaped

17. Fungus looks like coral, consisting of many small, upright branches

. . . Clavaria, Ramaria

17. Fungus club-shaped or funnel-shaped

. . . Craterellus, Cantharellus

16. Mushroom looks like a sponge or saddle or ball

18. Fungus looks like a sponge or saddle

. . . Morchella, Gyromitra

18. Fungus looks like a ball

. . . Calvatia

The “Foolproof Five”

Coprinus comatus, the Shaggy Mane (Edible). Sometimes emerges in spring but appears more frequently in summer and fall. Easily distinguished from other fungi because the cap does not open wide to a horizontal position. Cap 2 to 3 inches long, expanding to about 5 inches in length, egg- to bell-shaped, whitish sometimes with pinkish shades, with many yellowish or reddish brown scales; stem 3 to 7 inches long, white, pointed at the base, hollow and smooth to silky; movable ring on stem. Spore print black. As the Shaggy Mane ages, it quickly breaks down into an inky mass, with dissolution, or deliquescence, starting on the hanging rim of the cap and progressing upward; this process continues even if the mushroom is refrigerated. Coprinus comatus grows singly or in clusters, rarely in fairy rings, on bare ground or in grass, in rich earth along roadsides, in pastures, lawns, gardens, and waste dumping grounds. Mushroom hunters often cook this flavorful mushroom with scrambled eggs; it is also excellent in soups, sauces, and gravies. In Britain, Coprinus comatus is dubbed the Lawyer’s Wig.

Coprinus comatus, the Shaggy Mane.

An aging Coprinus comatus.

Morchella species, the Morels or Sponge Mushrooms (Edible). Spring. The several species of Morels found in the Northeast are so similar that they will be described here only in a general way. All are edible. Height, 2 to 5 inches; cap bell-shaped, conic, or hemispherical, marked with very prominent ridges and furrows or with prominent ridges connected by cross ridges; cap looks like a sponge; caps vary in color from white to gray to tan. Stem distinct, thick, fleshy, and white, cream-colored, or buff. Cap and stem both hollow. Spore color white to creamy white. Usually occurs in woods on the ground. Distribution is erratic: Morels grow under tulip trees, oaks, and hickories in open woods; under dead or dying elms; or far removed from trees. They have been found with regularity in uncultivated grassy apple orchards: the older the orchard, the more likely that Morels will emerge there. At times they grow profusely in rich soil along streambanks where overflows are common. Old fencerows in limestone areas may yield them in abundance. Morels often are produced year after year in the same place, and a wet spring promotes their best development. One should look for them especially at the time that the first petals begin to fall from the apple blossoms. The season lasts three or four weeks.

Soak Morels overnight in salt water to drive out insects and slugs, and cut them lengthwise to check for such creatures before cooking. The Black Morel (Morchella elata; formerly Morchella angusticeps) has been reported to cause gastrointestinal upset when eaten along with alcohol.

Morchella esculenta, the Yellow Morel.

Morchella esculenta.

Laetiporus sulphureus

(Polyporus sulphureus), the Sulphur Shelf or Chicken of the Woods (Edible). Late summer and fall. A large, conspicuous mushroom, 8 to 24 inches broad, fleshy and watery to rather firm when fresh, drying to a rigid, brittle consistency; clusters of the shelflike caps may overlap each other, or caps may be clustered together like a bouquet of flowers; upper surface of caps salmon, sulphur yellow, or bright orange, weathering to chalk white as time passes; margin smooth, at first thick and blunt, later thinner; inner tissue white, light yellow, or pale salmon, ¼ to ¾ inch thick; pores very small, tubes ¼ to ½ inch long, pore surface bright sulphur yellow to cream or white. Spore print white. On stumps, trunks, and logs of deciduous and coniferous trees, especially oaks. Its color, shape, and growth on wood make it difficult to confuse this species with any other. Note where it is collected, for it may appear again in the same year and for several years thereafter. Large fruitings can weigh 20 or more pounds. For eating, select the fresh young fruiting bodies and the tender edges of older ones. In some locales, deer have learned to feed on Laetiporus sulphureus.

Laetiporus sulphureus, the Sulphur Shelf.

Laetiporus sulphureus in the wild.

Puffballs

The fungi known as puffballs are almost all edible if eaten when young, when the interior flesh is pure white and has a firm consistency. Collectors should cut through the middle of smaller specimens to make sure they are not immature stages of stinkhorn fungi, which have a bad odor, or Amanita mushrooms, which can be deadly poisonous. The cut section will show a gelatinous inner layer if the specimen is the early stage of an inedible stinkhorn, or the developing cap and stem if it is an Amanita.

Puffballs are so named because the fruiting body is shaped like a ball, and at maturity the powdery spores come puffing out in a dusty cloud when the mushroom is stepped on or squeezed. Puffballs grow on the ground and on rotting wood.

Calvatia craniformis, the Skull-Shaped Puffball (Edible). Late summer and fall. Round, 3 to 6 inches across, whitish or pinkish brown, smooth, soon cracking into irregular areas, with a short, stemlike base. Mature spore tissue yellow-green. Usually occurs in groups of several to many individuals in grassy meadows and open woods. This species has a fine flavor; it should be peeled and eaten only when young.

Calvatia gigantea, the Giant Puffball (Edible). Summer and fall. Round or egg-shaped, 8 to 24 inches across; practically no stem, attached to the ground by cordlike strands; outer surface smooth although sometimes slightly roughened, like chamois to the touch, white or whitish, later becoming yellow or brown; inner substance pure white at first, changing to yellowish, and finally becoming dingy olive. Occurs singly or in groups of a few, on lawns, in pastures, meadows, and open woods, sometimes on streambanks. This mushroom is so large and has such a unique form that it cannot be mistaken for any other. It is highly sought as food.

Calvatia gigantea, the Giant Puffball.

DESTROYING ANGEL: THE DEADLY MUSHROOM

Charles Fergus and C. Leonard Fergus

The Destroying Angel is Amanita virosa. It belongs to a large and widespread group of fungi, the amanitas, which have been affecting humans for millennia as food, religious symbols, hallucinogens, and poisons. No one really knows how many species of amanitas exist. A respected mycologist recognizes seventy-five worldwide, while the U.S. Department of Agriculture lists over six hundred species, subspecies, and varieties reported from places as various as Perth, Australia, and Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Amanitas are large, showy mushrooms. Many measure 4 to 5 inches across the cap, and they come in a rainbow of colors—red, orange, brown, yellow, gray, green, white. Although only some of the amanitas are toxic, the group as a whole causes more than 90 percent of all fatal mushroom poisonings. The Destroying Angel is the most frequent killer in North America; in Europe, the major culprit is the Death Cap, Amanita phal-loides. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the Death Cap immigrated to America, probably clinging to the roots of ornamental shrubs. Collectors have found this greenish-capped mushroom in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, California, Oregon, and Washington. …

An amanita has two distinguishing characteristics. The first is a cuplike structure, called a volva, at the base of the stem. The mushroom looks like it is growing out of this cup. The second characteristic is a white spore print, a pattern laid down by millions of microscopic spores—reproductive cells that can be thought of as tiny seeds—falling from the gills on the underside of the mushroom’s cap. To make a spore print, separate the cap from the stem, place the cap gills-down on a piece of black paper, and wait a couple of hours. If the mushroom is an amanita, a white-on-black negative image of the gills will appear. Other mushrooms may make yellow, pink, brown, purple-brown, or black spore prints. (Note that a number of mushrooms yielding colored spore prints also are poisonous.) A few non-amanitas have volvas, and some make white spore prints, but only an amanita exhibits both. Another trait of most, though not all, amanitas is a ring of tissue on the stem, a remainder of the partial veil that enclosed the growing mushroom.

Three stages of Amanita virosa.

Amanita toxins, called amanitins, are especially potent. A single bite of mushroom can bring on an agonizing, lingering death. The stem, gills, and cap are equally deadly. The toxins survive cooking, freezing, drying. And while most poisonous mushrooms cause symptoms an hour or two after they’re eaten, an amanita doesn’t tip its hand for six to twenty-four hours. A victim may enjoy another meal, perhaps finishing his collection of wild mushrooms, go to work, even sleep while the poison invades his body.

Finally, he is seized by stomach pains, violent vomiting, and diarrhea. But purging the system does no good, because the mushrooms have already been digested. If the victim is not hospitalized, and if he ate more than one average-size mushroom cap, the illness worsens and usually causes death.

In a hospital, doctors can relieve the vomiting and diarrhea and correct the dangerous dehydration they produce. The patient feels better and seems to recover. He may even be discharged if his illness has not been diagnosed. Then, three to six days later, the symptoms reappear. In many cases, the victim dies. An autopsy reveals massive liver and kidney damage.

—Excerpted from Common & Edible Mushrooms of the Northeast

Calvatia craniformis, the Skull-Shaped Puffball.

—From Common Edible & Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northeast

Edible Fungi

U.S. Army

About 16,000 varieties of edible fungi grow in different parts of the world. The mushrooms you eat on your steaks and the mold in the blue cheese that you spread on crackers are two forms of fungi.

Although fungi are not a good substitute for meat, they are comparable in food content to common leafy vegetables, and they often are available in areas where other edible plants are scarce.

Gilled fungi, or mushrooms, are the most common of edible fungi and are 98 percent safe to eat, but they have been subjected to many “old wives’ tales” and, thus are considered untouchable foods by many people. The term “toadstools,” for example, has been used so much to describe any inedible or poisonous variety of mushroom that people apply this name to most unfamiliar varieties. The distinguishing characteristics of “toadstools” such as odor, peeling of skin bruises, and livid colors may also be present in the edible forms. The best way to tell the difference is to study the general characteristics of both the edible and poisonous varieties. Supplement this information with the following list of hints for selecting edible mushrooms:

(a) Dig the gilled mushroom completely out of the ground. Eliminate those having a cup, or vulva, at the base.

(b) Avoid all gilled mushrooms in the young stage. This young mushroom will have a buttonlike appearance and may be distinguished from the young edible puffball because it will have a short stem, not a characteristic of the puffball.

(d) Avoid gilled mushrooms with membranelike cups or scaly bulbs at the base, especially if the gills are white.

(e) Avoid all gilled mushrooms with white or pale milky juice.

(f) Avoid all gilled woodland mushrooms with a smooth, flat, reddish top and white gills radiating out from the stem-like spokes.

(g) Avoid yellow or yellowish-orange mushrooms growing on old stumps. If they have crowded and solid stems, convex overlapping cups, broad gills extending irregularly down the stem, or surfaces that glow phosphorescently in the dark, they are probably poisonous.

(h) Avoid any mushroom which seems to be too ripe, water-soaked, spoiled, or maggoty.

(i) Become familiar with the following poisonous mushrooms of the Amanite family (the most deadly is the Death Angel). The Death Angel is widespread in Europe, Asia, and America but seems to be more common in north temperate regions. This plant produces one of the tox-albumin poisons, the poisons found in rattlesnakes and other venomous animals and the poisons that produce death in cholera and diphtheria. The amount of this fungus necessary to produce death is small.

(j) If you get sick after eating mushrooms, tickle the back of your throat to induce vomiting. Do not drink water until after you vomit; then drink lukewarm water and powdered charcoal.

All nongilled fungi are nonpoisonous when eaten fresh. A familiar example of a nongilled fungus is the puffball. Others include morels, coral fungi, coral hydnums, and cup fungi.

Boletus cap and the area in which to look for reddish spores.

Mushroom with gills, veil, but no basal cup.

Puffball.

Morel (Ashengray).

Identifying cups of Death Angel.

Coral fungus (2 to 6 inches high, white, orange, yellow, pale violet, or buff).

Identifying cups of fly agaric.

Coral Hydnum.

Death Angel with gills, veil, stem, and cup.

Fly agaric.

—From Survival (Field Manual 21–76, 1970 Edition)

Purslane

Rose

SURVIVAL STRATEGIES

Annual or ephemeral plants

Phreatophytes

Xerophytes

EDIBLE DESERT PLANTS

Prickly pear cactus

Grasses

Sotol

Century plant

Yucca

Desert amaranth

Date palm

Acorns

Cattails

Sassafras

Shepherd’s Purse

Slippery Elm

Sumac

Plants for Medicine

Terms and Definitions

Spruce

Dwarf arctic birch

Lichens

Specific Remedies

Miscellaneous Uses of Plants

A Selection of Medicinal Plants

Amaranth (Amaranthus)

Arrowhead (Sagittaria)

Birch (Betula)

Tannin

Preparation

Treatments

Salicin/salicylic acid

Preparation

Treatments

Common plantain

Preparation.

Treatments

Papain

Preparation

Treatments

Common Cattail

Preparation

Treatments

Blackberry-Raspberry (Rubus)

Bulrush (Typha)

Chickweed (Alsine) (Stellaria media)

Chicory (Chichorium intybus)

Common Burdock (Arctium lappa)

Elderberry (Sambucus)

Indian Fig (Opuntia ficus indica)

Maple (Acer)

Mint (Mentha)

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

Oak (Quercus)

Pine (Pinus)

Poke (Phytolacca)

Pusley (Portulaca oleracea)

Sassafras (Sassafras)

Slippery Elm (Ulmusfulva)

Stinging Nettle (Urtica)

Tansy (Tancetum vulgare)

Walnut (Juglans)

Wild Clover (Trifolium)

Wild Onion (Allium)

Willow (Salix)

Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)

Yucca (Yucca)

Poisonous Plants

How Plants Poison

All About Plants

Rules for Avoiding Poisonous Plants

Contact Dermatitis

Ingestion Poisoning

Mushrooms

Important Parts of Mushrooms

Some Common Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of the Northeast