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USEFUL WILD PLANTS

OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA ^

BY CHARLES FRANCIS SAUNDERS

Author of "Under the Sky in California," "With the Flowers

and Trees in California," "Finding the Worth While in

California," "Finding the Worth While in

the Southwest," Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS,

AND BY NUMEROUS LINE DRAWINGS

BY LUCY HAMILTON ARING

NEW YORK ROBERT M. McBRIDE ^ CO.

1926

Copyright, 1920, by Robert M. McBride & Co.

Revised Edition

Published January^ jgab

Published April, 1920

TO DOROTHY F. H.

LOVER OF WILD THINGS

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

ALL the familiar vegetables and fruits of our kitchen gardens, as well as the cereals of our fields, were once wild plants; or, to put it more ac- curately, they are the descendants, improved by cultivation and selection, of ancestors as untamed in their way as the primitive men and women who first learned the secret of their nutritiousness. Many of these — as, for example, the potato, Indian corn, cer- tain sorts of beans and squashes, and the tomato — are of New World origin; and the purpose of this volume is to call attention to certain other useful plants, particularly those available as a source of human meat and drink, that are to-day growing wild in the woods, waters and open country of the United States. Though now largely neglected, many of these plants formed in past years an important element in the diet of the aborigines, who were vegetarians to a greater extent than is generally suspected, and whose patient investigation and in- genuity have opened the way to most that we know of the economic possibilities of our indigenous flora. White explorers, hunters and settlers have also, at

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

times, made use of many of these plants to advan- tage, though with the settlement of the country a return to the more familiar fruits and products of civilization has naturally followed. Man's tendency to nurse a habit is nowhere more marked than in his stubborn indisposition to take up with new foods, if the first taste does not please, as frequently it does not; witness the slowness with which the tomato came into favor, and the Englishman's con- tinued indifference to maize for human consumption.

Sometimes, however, the claims of necessity over- ride taste, and there would seem to be a service in presenting in a succinct way the known facts about at least the more readily utilized of our wild plants. The data herein given, the writer owes in part to the published statements of travelers and investi- gators (to whom credit is given in the text), and in part to his own first hand observations, particularly in the West, where the Indian is not yet altogether out of his blanket, and where some practices still linger that antedate the white man's coming. The essential worth of the plants discussed having been proved by experience, it is hoped that to dwellers in rural districts, to campers and vacationists in the wild, as well as to nature students and naturalists generally, the work may be practically suggestive.

The reader is referred to the following standard

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

works for complete scientific descriptions of the plants discussed: Gray's Manual of Botany of the Northern United States (east of the Rockies) ; Brit- ton and BrowTi's Illustrated Flora of the United States and Canada (the same territory as covered by Gray) ; SmalPs Flora of the Southeastern United States; Watson's Botany of the Geological Survey of California; Coulter's New Manual of Botany of the Central Rocky Mountains; Wootton and Standley's Flora of New Mexico,

\

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Introductory Statement. vii

I Wild Plants with Edible Tubers, Bulbs or Roots 1

II Wild Plants with Edible Tubers, Bulbs or Roots

(Continued) 17

III Wild Seeds of Food Value, and How They Have

Been Utilized 41

IV The Acorn as Human Food and Some Other Wild

Nuts 67

V Some Little Regarded Wild Fruits and Berries . 83

VI Wild Plants with Edible Stems and Leaves . . 114

VII Beverage Plants of Field and Wood 141

VIII Vegetable Substitutes for Soap 167

IX Some Medicinal Wildings Worth Knowing . . 184

X Miscellaneous Uses of Wild Plants .... 210

XI A Cautionary Chapter on Certain Poisonous

Plants 236

Regional Index 259

General Index 269

THE ILLUSTRATIOXS IX HALF-TONE

Indian woman shelling acorns, to be ground into

meal Frontispiece

FACI.Va PAGK

Prickly Pear {Opimtia tuna), one of the important food

plants of the desert regions 18

An Indian of the Great Lakes Region threshing wild rice

by means of dasher-like stick 46

Red Maple {Acer rubrum), the source of a dark blue dye

in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists .... 54

A Western mountain Indian's storage baskets for preserving acorns and pine-nuts. They are elevated to forestall the depredations of rodents 70

A Southwestern desert hillside, which, in spite of its desolate look, bears plants yielding food, soap, textile fiber and drinking water. The man in the foreground is cutting mescal 90

Gathering tunas, fruit .of the nopal cactus, California . . 108

California Fan Palm {Washingtonia) , which furnishes food,

clothing and building materials 112

Cereus giganteus — Sahuaro — producing a fruit that is used

for wine, syrup and butter 112

Southwestern Indian cutting mescal {Agave desert i) for baking 136

Ecliinocactus, a vegetable water barrel of the Southwestern

deserts 158

A California Soap Root, Chenopodium Calif ornicum . . 158

THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN HALF-TONE

FACING PAGE

A Pacific soap plant (Chlorogalwn pomeridianum). The bulb, stripped of its fibrous covering, is highly sapona- ceous. The fiber is useful for making coarse brushes and mattresses 174

Tunas, fruit of a Southwestern cactus. Showing how it is

opened to secure the meaty pulp 174

Flowering Dogwood {CornuPi forida, L.) The bark is used in making a medicine similar to quinine, and produces also a red dye used by the Indians 204

Blood-root (Sangiiwaria Canadensis), valuable as the source

of a bright red dye 224

Butternut (Juglans cinerea). The bark is the source of a dye used for the uniforms of Confederate soldiers during the Civil War 240

Indian woman preparing squaw-weed (Rhus trilohata) for

basket making 252

Mesquit Beans, utilized by the Indians for food and beverage 270

Wild Date {Yucca glaiica). The root furnishes a satisfactory

substitute for soap 270

THE ILLUSTRATIOXS IX LINE

PAGE 9

Groundnut (Apios tuherosa)

Jerusalem Artichoke {Ilelianthus tuherosus) 5

Indian Breadroot (Psoralea esculenta) 8

Biseuit-Root (Peucedanum Sp.) 11

Biscuit-Root (Peiicedanum ambiguum) 12

Bitter Root {Lewisia rediviva) 15

Wild Leek (Allium tricoccum) 18

Seao Lily {Calochortus Nuttallii) 19

"Wild Onion [Brodiaea capitata) 21

Camas (Camassia esculenta) 24

Chufa (Cy penis esculentus) 26

Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.) 28

Conte {Smilax Pseudo-China) 30

Arrowhead (Sagittaria variahilis) 32

Water Chinquapin {Nelumho lutea) 34

Jaek-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) 38

Chia [Salvia Columhariae) 44

Wild Rice {Zizania aquatica) 4G

Islay (Prunus ilicifolia) 58

Hog Peanut (Amphicarpaea monoica) 60

Mesquit (Prosopis jidifora) 62,63

Jojoba [Simmondsia Calif ornica) 70

Buffalo-Berry (Shepherd ia argentea) 84

Tomato del Carapo (Phgsalis longi folia) 88

Service-Berry (Amelanchier Canadensis) 00

American Hawthorn (Crataegus inollis) 93

Manzanita (Arctostaphylos Manzanita) 95

Oregon Grape (B erher is aqui folium) 97,98

May Apple (Podophyllum peltatum) 99

Salal (GauUheria Shallon) 103

Bracken Shoots (Pteris aquilina) 115

THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN LINE

PAGE

Chicory {Cicliorium Intyhus) 118

Milkweed {Asclepias Syriaca) 120

Wild Rhubarb {Bumex liymenosepalus) 122

Winter Cress {Barbarea vulgaris) 125

Miner's Lettuce {Montia perfoliata) 130

New Jersey Tea {Ceanothus Americanus) 143

Spicewood {Lindera Benzoin) 146

Yerba Buena (Micromeria Douglasii) 151

Sumac {B]nis glabra) 153

Lemonade-Berry {Bhus integrifolia) 155

Cassena {Ilex vomitoria) 163

California Soap-Plant {Chlorogalutn pomeridianum) . 171,172

Soap-Beriy {Sapindus marginatus) 178

Missouri Gourd {Cucurbita foetidissima) 180

Bouncing- Bet [Saponaria ofpcinalis) 182

"Wild Senna {Cassia Marylandica) 187,188

Boneset {Eupatorium perfoliatum) 190

"Wild Cherry {Prunus serotina) 191

Dittany {Cunila Mariana) 193

Cascara Sagrada {Bhamnus Cahfornica) 196

Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon glutinosum) 199

Yerba Mansa {Anemopsis Calif ornica) 201

Creosote-Bush {Larrea Mexicana) 203

Canchalagua {Erythraea venusta) 208

Indian Hemp {Apocynum cannabinum) .... 212,213

Puccoon {Litliospernum canescetis) 224

Kinnikinnik {Cornus sericea) 226

Sweet ColtVFoot {Petasites palmata) 233

Candleberry {Myrica Carolinensis) 235

Death Cup {Amanita phalloides) 237

"Water Hemlock {Cicuta macidata) 238

Poison Hemlock {Conium macidatum) 241

Moonseed {Menispermum Canadense) 243

Loco- Weed {Astragalus mollissimus) 246

Jimson-Weed {Datura Stramonium) 248

Mescal-Button {Lopiiophora Williamsii) 253

Swamp Sumac {Bhus venenata) 255

Poison Ivy {Bhus Taxicodendron) 256

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

CHAPTER I

WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS,

BULBS OR ROOTS

Your greatest want is you want much of meat. Why should you want? Behold the earth hath roots.

Timon of Athens.

THE plant life of the New World was always a subject of keen interest to the early explorers, whose narratives not only abound in quaint allu- sions to the new and curious products of Flora that came under their notice, but also record for many of our familiar plants uses that are a surprise to most modern readers. In that famous compilation of travelers' tales, published in England some three centuries ago under the title of ^^Purchas: His Pil- grimage," it is asserted of the tubers of a certain plant observed in New England that *^ boiled or sodden they are very good meate"; and elsewhere in Master Purchases volumes there is note of the abun-

1

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

dance of the same tubers, whicli were sometimes as many as "forty together on a string, some of them as big as hen's eggs/'

Groundnut (Apios tuherosa)

This plant is readily identifiable as the Groundnut — Apios tuherosa, Moench., of the botanists — of fre- quent occurrence in marshy grounds and moist

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

thickets throughout a large part of the United States and Canada from Ontario to Florida and westward to the Missouri River basin. It is a climbing peren- nial vine with milky juice and leaves composed of usually 5 to 7 leaflets. To the midsunnner rambler it betrays its presence by the violet-like fragrance exhaled b}" bunchy racemes of odd, brownish-purple flowers of the type of the pea. Neither history nor tradition tells us what lucky Lidian first chanced upon the pretty vine's prime secret, that store of roundish tubers borne upon underground stems, which made it so valuable to the red men that they eventually took to cultivating it about some of their "vdllages. Do not let the name Groundnut cause you to confuse this plant with the one that yields the familiar peanut of city street stands, which is quite a different thing. The Groundnut is really no nut at all but a starchy tuber, which, when cooked, tastes somewhat like a white potato. Indeed, Dr. Asa Gray expressed the belief that had civilization started in the New World instead of the Old, this would have been the first esculent tuber to be de- veloped and would have maintained its place in the same class with the potato.

Narratives of white travelers in our American wilderness bear abundant evidence to the Ground-

3

USEFUL WILD PLANTS*

nut's part in saving them from serious hunger. Being a vegetable, it made a grateful complement to the enforced meat diet of pioneers and explorers ; and Major Long, whose share in making known the Eocky Mountain region to the world is commemo- rated in the name of one of our country's loftiest peaks, tells in his journal of his soldiers' finding the little tubers in quantities of a peck or more hoarded up in the brumal retreats of the field mice against the lean days of winter. They may be cooked either by boiling or by roasting.

Though the Groundnut has so far failed of se- curing a footing in the gardens of civilization, there is another tuber-bearing plant growing wild in the United States that has a recognized status in the world's common stock of vegetables. This is a species of Sunflower {Heliantlms tuherosus, L.), the so-called Jerusalem Artichoke. It is indigenous in moist, alluvial ground from middle and eastern Canada southward to Georgia and west to the Mis- sissippi Valley, attaining a height at times of 10 feet or more. The French explorers in the St. Lawrence region in the early seventeenth century saw the tubers in use by the Indians and found them so palatable when cooked, suggesting arti- chokes, that they sent specimens back to France.

4

Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuherosusj

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

There they caught the popular taste and under the name of ponimes de Canada, batatas de Canada or Canadlennes, th'eir cultivation sjoread. In Italy they were grown in the famous Farnese gardens and called, they say, girasole articiocco, Sunflower artichoke. A perverted pronunciation of the Ital- ian by the English (who became interested in the plant and were growing it extensively as early as 1621), is the popularly accepted explanation of the association of Jerusalem with it. The tubers (borne at the tip of horizontal rootstocks) are in the wild plant but an inch or two in diameter, but in cultiva- tion they may be much larger, as well as better flav- ored. They reach their maximum development in the autumn, when they may be taken up and stored in pits for mnter use; or, since frost does not injure them, they may be left in the ground all winter, and dug in the spring. In spite of the Jerusalem Arti- choke's popularity as a vegetable abroad, Americans have so far been indifferent to it, except as feed for cattle and hogs — another instance of the prophet's lack of honor in his o^\ti country.^

1 There are about 40 species of wild sunflowers growing within the borders of the United States, and it is not always easy to identify some given species. The Artichoke Sunflower is a perennial with hairy, branching stems 6 to 12 feet tall, and rough, ovate leaves, taper pointed, toothed at the edges, 4 to 8 inches long and iVo to 3 inches wide, narrowing at the base to a rather long footstalk.

6

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

Upon dry, elevated plains in and contiguous to the Missouri River basin ranging from Saskatchewan through Montana and the Uakotas southward to Texas, you may find, where the plough has not ex- terminated it, another famous wild food plant — the Indian Bread-root of the American pioneers, known to them also as Prairie Turnip and Prairie Potato, and 'to the French Canadians as pomme de prairie and pomme hlanclie. Botanically it is Psoralea escu- lenta, Pursh, and its smaller cousin P. hypogaea, Nutt. It is a rather low, rough-hairy herb, resinous- dotted, with long-stalked leaves divided into five fingers, and bearing dense spikes of small bluish flowers like pea blossoms in shape. The tuberous root, a couple of inches in length, resembles a minia- ture sweet potato. Its nutritious properties were w^ell knowm to Indians and such whites of other days as had any respect for the aboriginal dietary; and Indian women found a regular sale for it among the caravans of white traders, trappers and emigrants that traveled the far w^estern plains in pre-railroad

Flowers yellow, both disk and rays, the latter numberinc^ 12 to 20, and 1 to li/o inches long. There is another species, //. giganteus, L., one form of which growing in moist ground in western Canada has thickened, tuber-like roots which are similarly edible. These are the "Indian potato" of the Assiniboine Indians. ]\Ir. W. N. Clute, in "The American Botanist," February, 1018, noted that the prairie species, Belianthus laetifJoi'iis, Pers., also bears tubers, which are little inferior to those of H. tuberosus.

7

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

times. The fresh tubers, dug in late summer, may- be eaten raw with a dressing of oil, vinegar and

Indian Bread-root (Psoralea esciilentaj

salt, or they may be boiled or roasted. The Indians (who were habitual preservers of vegetable foods

8

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

for winter use) were accustomed to save a portion of the Bread-root harvest, first slicing the tubers and then drying them in the sun or over a slow tire. The dried article was ground between stones and added to stews or soups, or mixed with water and baked in the form of cakes. The heart of the tuber is white and granular, and, according to an analysis quoted hj Dr. Havard,^ contains 70% starch, 9% nitrogenous matter and 5% sugar. Some attempts have been made to introduce it into culti- vation as a rival of the potato, but the latter is so well entrenched in the popular regard that nothing has come of the effort. As a resource for those who are cut off from a potato supply, however, this free offering of Nature should be better known. John Colter, one of Lewis and Clarke's men, escap- ing from some Blackfeet who w^ere intent upon killing him, lived for a week entirely upon these l^)read-root tubers, which he gathered as he made his painful wa}^ afoot, wounded, and absolutely naked, back to the settlements of the whites.

There are, by the way, two wild species of true potatoes indigenous to the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona — Solanum tuberosum boreale, Grav, and

2 "Food Plants of the North American Indians," Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 22, No. 3.

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

S. Jamesii, Torr. The tubers are about the size of grapes, are quite edible when cooked and long ago attracted the attention of the Navajo and other Lidians, who use them. And curiously in contrast to this the sweet potato of cultivation has a wild cousin in the United States {Ipomoea panduratay Meyer) with a huge, tuberous root weighing some- times 20 pounds, popularly called "man-of-the- earth.'^ It is found in dry ground throughout the eastern United States, a trailing or slightly climbing vine with flowers like a morning glory. So obvious a root could hardly have escaped the Indian quest for vegetables, and as a matter of fact it was eaten to some extent after long roasting.

There is a plant family — the Umhelliferae — that has given to our gardens carrots, parsnips, celery and parsley. It includes also a number of wild members with food value, occurring principally in the Eocky Mountain region westward to the Pacific. Among these the genus Peucedannm, represented in western North America by over 50 species, is note- worthy because of the edible tuberous roots of several species. Of these the folloAving may be noted, adopting Dr. Havard's enumeration in his paper above quoted: P. Cmibyi, C. and K. (the chuklusa of the Spokane Indians) ; P. eurycarpum,

10

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

C. and E. (the skelaps of the Spokanes) ; P. Geyeri^ Wats.; P. amhignum, T. and G., P. cous, Wats, (the cow-as of the In- dians). The tubers may be consumed raw and in that state have a celery flavor. The most usual method of use among the Indians, however, was to remove the rind, dry the inside portion, and pul- verise it. The flour would then be mixed with water, flattened into cakes and dried in the sun or baked. These cakes, according to Palmer,^ were custom- arily about half an inch thick but a yard long by a foot wide, with a hole in the middle, by which they could be tied to the saddle of the traveler. The taste of such cakes is rather like stale biscuits. On

3 Edward Palmer, "Food Products of the North American Indians," Ann. Kept. U. S. Dcpt. Agriculture, 1870.

11

Biscuit-Root ( Peucedanum 8p.)

«* 7.* -n

it* '•• '/.

Biscuit-Root (Peucedanum amhiguum)

12

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

this account, the Peucadanums were commonly termed Biscuit-root by the white Americans. The Canadian French call them racine hlanche. The genus is marked by leaves pinnate in some species, finely dissected in others, sometimes stemless and never tall, and with small white or yellow flowers disposed in umbels like those of the carrot or parsley. Novices, however, should be warned that the Um- belliferae include several poisonous species, and the investigator should be well assured of the identity of his plant before experimenting with it.

Then there is Yamp, of this same family, and cousin to the caraway. It is the botanists' Carum Gairdneri, B. and H. — a slender, smooth herb, some- times four feet high, with scanty pinnate leaves 3- to 7-parted and white flowers like the carrot's, growing usually on dry hillsides in mountainous country from British Columbia to Southern California and eastward to the Rockies. The clustered, spindle- shaped roots are about half an inch thick, and raw have an agreeable, nutty taste, with a considerable sugar content. Not only Indians but white settlers also have proved the nutritive value of this root, eating it either raw or cooked. In meadows and along stream borders in Central California a nearly related species {Carum Kelloggii, Gray) frequently

13

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

occurs and goes among the whites by the name of Wild Anise."* Its roots bear in greater or less abundance flattish tubers, which are ser\dceable in the same way as Yamp.

A more famous root of the Pacific Slope than Yamp is the Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva, Pursh), the racine amere of the French explorers, and found from Arizona north -to Montana (where it has given name to the Bitterroot Mountains and Bitterroot Eiver) and w^est to the Pacific. It is a member of the Portulaca family, with showy, many-petaled white or pink blossoms sometimes two inches across and opening in the sunshine close -to the ground, in form like a spoked wheel. Montana has adopted it as her State flower. It is one of the marvels in the history of alimentation that the unappetizing ro'ots of this plant, intensely bitter when raw and smelling like tobacco when boiling, should have secured a stable place in any human bill of fare. Neverthe- less, by the Indians of the far Northwest it has been extensively consumed from time immemorial, and explorers' journals contain many references to ab-

4 Not to be confused with the mis-called Sweet Anise, which is really Fennel, the introduced ForniciiJum vulfiare. The latter is abundantly clothed with large, finely dissected leaves of a pronounced licorice flavor and has vellow flowers; while the Carum bears white flowers and its leaves are sparse and pinnate with simple seg- ments.

14

BiTTERROOT

(Lewisia rediviva)

15

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

original '^spreads'' put before them in which spat- lum, as the Oregon Indians called it, had a prominent place. Boiling has the effect of dissipating the bitterness; and the white heart of the root, which is starchy and mucilaginous, is certainly nutritious, though ideas as to its palatability differ. The In- dian practice is to dig the roots in the spring, at which time the brownish bark slips off more easily than after the plant has flowered; and as 'the bitter principle is mainly resident in the bark, it is desir- able to reject this before cooking. A noteworthy character of the root is its tenacity of life. Speci- mens that have been dipped in boiling water, dried and laid away in an herbarium for over a year, have been knovni to revive on being put in the ground again, to grow and to produce flowers. An Eastern cousin of the Bitterroot is the charming woodland flower of early spring called Spring Beauty {Claytonia Virginica, L.). It rises from a small, deep-seated, round tuber of starchy composi- tion and nutty flavor, which might serve at a pinch to stave off starvation, and has indeed so served the aborigines.

16

CHAPTER II

WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS {Continued)

IT is a character of the Lily family that the plants are usually produced from subterranean bulbs or corms, and many such growing Avild in the LTnited States are of proved nutritiousness and palatability. Among these, for instance, are species of Allium, wild onion or leek, one of which particularly (^4. tricoccum, Ait.) is recommended by those who have tried it for the sweetness and flavor of its young bulbs. It inhabits rich woodlands of the eastern Atlantic States north of South Carolina, its umbel of white flowers borne on naked stalks, appearing in June or July after its rather broad, odorous leaves have withered away. It is the Pacific Coast, how- ever, that has a special fame for edible wild bulbs, many of which are knoA\TL to the world at large only for the beauty of their flowers. There the Indians have, from before history began, been consuming such bulbs either raw or cooked. To some extent,

17

Wild Leek

(Allium tricoccum)

18

CO

-I)

Ztj

o

1- o

■»1 ^

\

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

also, they have been dra^\^l upon for food b}^ white travelers and settlers — the most palatable species being of the genera Calochortus, Brodiaea and Camassia, and com- monlv called ' ' In- dian potatoes." The genus Calochortus furnishes the flower gardens of both hemi- spheres with the charming Mariposa Tulips, and few who enjoy their beauty re- alize the gastronomic possibilities of the homely, farinaceous corms out of which the lovely blossoms spring. The species most w^idely known as a food source is Calo- chortus Niittallii, T. and G., the Sego Lily, which has the distinction of being Utah's State flower. It may be recognized by its showy, tulip-shaped blossoms, whitish or lilac with a purple spot above the yellow heart of the

19

Sego Lily (Calochortus NtittaUii)

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

flower, the leaves few and grass-like. It is in- digenous to an extensive territory ranging from Dakota to Mexico and westward to the Pacific Coast. It w^as, I believe, a common article of diet among the first Mormons in Utah, under the name "Wild Sago," through a misunderstanding, perhaps, of the word "Sego," w^iich is the Ute Indian term for this plant. A California species (C. venustuSj Benth.) wath white or lilac flowers variously tinged or blotched wdth red, yellow or brown, is also highly esteemed for its sw^eet corms. The cooking may be done by the simple process known to campers of roasting in hot ashes, or by steaming in pits, a method tHat will be described later on.

Brodiaea is a genus comprising numerous species, of wdiich the so-called California Hyacinth, Grass- nut or Wild Onion {B. caintata, Benth.), common throughout the State, is perhaps the best kno^vn. Its clustered, pale blue flow^ers bunched at the tip of a slender stem are a familiar sight in grassy places in spring. The bulbs are about the size of marbles and noticeably mucilaginous. Eaten raw they seem rather flat at first, but the taste growls on one very quickly. They are also ver}^ good if boiled slowly for a half hour or so. The Harvest Brodiaea (B.

20

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

grandiflora, Smith), with clusters of blue, funnel- shaped flowers like little blue lilies, is another familiar species common in fields and grassy glades from Central Cali- fornia northward to "Washington. Its bulbs are best cook- ed, as by slow roast- ing in hot ashes, which develops the sweetness.

But the liliaceous bulb that has enter- ed to the most im- portant extent in- to the menus both of aborigines and white pioneers is the Camas or Qua- mash — *'the queen root of this clime," as Father De Smet puts it in his ^'Oregon Missions." It is a hand- some plant when in flower, which is in early

21

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

summer. The 6-parted, usually blue blossoms, an inch or more across, occur in ample racemes at the top of stalks a foot or two high ; the leaves all radical and grass-like. The bulb somewhat resembles a small onion, but is almost tasteless in the raw state. The range of the plant is from Idaho and Utah west- ward to central California, Oregon and Washington ; and when undisturbed it grows so abundantly in open meadows and swampy lands as to convert them at a distance into the appearance of blue lakes of water. John K. To\\msend, a Philadelphian who published an interesting narrative of a journey to the Rocky Mountains in 1839, has left us a pleasant, old-fash- ioned picture of a Camas feast in central Idaho. '^In the afternoon," he writes, 'Sve arrived at Kamas Prairie, so called from a vast abundance of this succulent root which it produces. The plain is a beautiful level one of about a mile over, hemmed in by low, rocky hills, and in spring the pretty blue flowers of the Kamas are said to give it a peculiar and very pleasing appearance. . . . We encamped here near a small branch of the Mallade River; and soon after all hands took their kettles and scattered over the prairie to dig a mess of Kamas. We were of course eminently successful, and were furnished with an excellent and wholesome meal. When boiled,

22

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

this little root is palatable and somewhat resembles the taste of the common potato. The Indian method of preparing it, however, is the best. '^

This method, which embodies really the principle of our present day tireless cooker and has been em- ployed by the aborigines from time immemorial for cooking numberless things, is briefly this : A hole of perhaps three feet in diameter and a foot or so in depth is dug in the ground and lined, bottom and sides, with flat stones. A fire of brushwood is then maintained in the hole until the stones are thoroughly heated through, when the embers are re- moved and fresh grass or green leaves (or, failing these, dampened dried grass) are spread upon the hot rocks and ashes. Upon this the bulbs are laid, covered with another layer of verdure or wet hay; and the whole is then topped with a mound of earth. In this air-tight oven the bulbs are left to steam for a day and a night, or even longer. The pit is then opened and the Camas will be found to be soft, dark brown in color, and sweet — almost chestnutty — in taste. The cooked mass, if pressed into cakes and then dried in the sun, may be preserved for future use.

There are several species of Camas, but the one best known is the botanist's Camassia esciiloita,

23

Camas (Camassia esculenta)

24

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

Lindl., the plant of the preceding paragraphs. A closely allied species is Camassia Leiclitlinii (Baker) Gov., connnon in northern California and Oregon. White settlers, in the days before their orchards and gardens were established, found in Camas a wel- come addition to their meager and monotonous bill of fare, and Camas pie was a not uncommon dish in many an old time Oregon or California household.

Related to the Lily tribe is the Sedge family, of which two or three species are utilizable for human food. One of these is a bulrush of wide occurrence in the United States {Scirpns lacustris, L.), the Far Western form of which is commonly kno^^^l as Tule. Its tuberous roots are starchy and may be ground, after drying, into a white, nutritious flour. They may also be chewed to advantage by travelers in arid regions as a preventive of thirst. Of more worth, however, are two species of Cyperus — C. rotundiis, L., and C\ esculentiis, L. The former, commonly known as Nut-grass, is a denizen of fields in the Southern Atlantic States; the latter, popu- larly called Cliufa, is abundant in moist fields on both our seaboards. Both, also, are widely dis- tributed in the Old World. Like all of their genus, they are distinguished by triangular stems, naked ex- cept for a few grass-like leaves at the base, and bear-

25

ClIUFA

(Cyperus esculentusj

26

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

ing at the summit of the stem an umbel of incon- spicuous, purplish-green florets. The dietetic in- terest in them centers in the rootstocks, which bear small tubers of a pleasant, nutty flavor, and both white men and Indians have approved them, as well as the white men^s pigs. The Chufa's hard tubers, especially, are sweet and tasty, and in some parts of the South have been considered worthy of cultiva- tion, though by reason of rapid increase and difficulty to eradicate, the plant has a tendency to become a bad weed. We get the name Chufa from Spain, where the tul)ers are used in emulsion as a refresh- ment in the same class with ''almonds in the milk, pasties, strawberries, azaroles, sugar icing and sherbets," according to some lines of a Spanish poem I ran across the other dav.^

Of quite restricted occurrence in the United States, but worthy of mention because of its importance, is a member of a peculiar natural order of plants called Cycads. They resemble the palms in some respects and in others the ferns, their leaves, for instance, having a fashion of unrolling from base to apex in the manner of fern croziers. Many species inhabit tropical America, and two reach the southern

1 "Almondrucos y pastelos, Cliiifas, fresas y acerolas, Garapiiias y sorbetes."

27

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

tip of our oomitiy, being indigenous to the Florida peninsula. One, known to botanists as Zamia pumila, L., occurs in dense, damp woods of central

Florida Arrowroot (Zamia sp.)

Florida: the other, Z. Floridana, DC, is a wilding of the open, dry, pine region of the east coast of southern Florida. They are popularly called Coon- tie or Coontah, the Indian name. The stiff, fern-

28

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

like foliage arises in a clump from the crown (at the ground level) of a thick, subterranean stem which is exceedingly rich in starch. A nutritious flour made from the stem- and root-content of Zamia has had some vogue in the shops under the name of Florida Arro^vroot. It has long been a staple article of diet with the Seminole Indians, and the plant has even found its w^ay into the literature of juvenile adventure, as readers of boy romances may recall.

Similar in name to Coontie — indeed, probably the same name applied to a diiferent food — is Conte or Contee, mentioned by William Bartram ^ as served to him by the Seminoles, and prepared from the starchy, tuberous roots of the China-brier {Smilax Pseudo-China, L.). This dish was made by chopping up the root, pounding the pieces thoroughly in a mortar, then mixing wdth w^ater and straining through a sort of basket filter. The sediment w^as dried and appeared as a fine, reddish meal. A small quantity of this mixed with w^arm w^ater and honey, says Bartram, ^^w^hen cool, becomes a beautiful, delicious jelly, very nourishing and wholesome. They also mix it wdth fine corn flour, w^hicli, being fried in fresh bear's grease, makes very good hot

2 "Travels throiijjh Xortli and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, etc.," 177.3, Chap. VII.

29

COXTE

(Smilax Pseudo-China)

30

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

cakes or fritters.'' So, you see, the wilderness as well as the town had its gastronomic delicacies, and dallied with dyspepsia. The China-brier, sometimes called Bull-brier, is a perennial woody vine of dry thickets from Maryland to the Gulf of Mexico, adorned in autumn with showv umbels of black ber- ries not known to be edible. The whites have used the knotty, tuberous roots as the basis of a home- made rootbeer in association with molasses and parched corn.

Our waters, too, yield some native roots of economic worth. Among these aquatic wildings per- haps the commonest is the Arrowhead {Sagittaria variabilis, Eng.), so called from the shape of its leaves. It is found in swamps, ditches, ponds and shallow waters very generally throughout North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to Mexico, flowering in summer with 3- petaled white blossoms arranged in verticels of three. All Indians, wdiether of the Atlantic Slope, the Middle West or the Pacific Coast, have set great store by the plant because of its starchy, white tubers, somewhat resembling small potatoes, de- veloped in autumn at the ends of the rootstocks. It is nearly related to a cultivated vegetable of the Chinese — Sarjittaria Sinensis, a native of Asia.

31

IT

Arrowhead (Sagittaria variabilis)

f

iiiici

il'u.

a:"

n.

lU

f

32

I 'im

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OK ROOTS

't

Lewis and Clarke, in their narrative, speak of an island in the Columbia River, which they call AVap- patoo Island, because of the numerous ponds in its interior abounding in the Arrowhead plant, which in the Indian language is termed Wappatoo. Those doughty explorers have given a picturesque descrip- tion of the aboriginal Arrowhead business in the Columbia Eiver country of Oregon as it was a century ago. *'The bulb,'' to quote from their Nar- rative, ''is a great article of food and almost the staple of commerce on the Columbia. . . . It is col- lected by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes . . . sufficient to contain a single person and several bushels of roots, yet so very light a woman can carry them w^ith ease. She takes one of these canoes into a pond where the water is as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates from the root the bulb which on being freed from the mud rises immediately to the surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe.'' Roasted or boiled, the tubers become soft, palatable and digestible, and to travelers in the wild make a fairly good substitute for bread.

Also as bread upon the waters is that majestic aquatic, native to quiet streams and j^onds of the in- terior United States from the Great Lakes to the

33

Arrowhead ( Hagittaria variahilis)

32

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

Lewis and Clarke, in their narrative, speak of an island in the Colnmbia River, which they call AVap- patoo Island, because of the numerous ponds in its interior abounding in the Arrowhead plant, which in the Indian language is termed Wappatoo. Those doughty explorers have given a picturesque descrip- tion of the aboriginal Arrowhead business in the Columbia River country of Oregon as it was a century ago. ^^The bulb," to quote from their Nar- rative, *^is a great article of food and almost the staple of commerce on the Columbia. . . . It is col- lected by the women, who employ for the purpose canoes . . . sufficient to contain a single person and several bushels of roots, yet so very light a woman can carry them with ease. She takes one of these canoes into a pond where the water is as high as the breast, and by means of her toes separates from the root the bulb which on being freed from the mud rises immediately to the surface of the water and is thrown into the canoe." Roasted or boiled, the tubers become soft, palatable and digestible, and to travelers in the wild make a fairly good substitute for bread.

Also as bread upon the waters is that majestic aquatic, native to quiet streams and ponds of the in- terior United States from the Great Lakes to the

33

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Gulf, the AmGrican Lotus or Water Chinquapin {Nelumho hdea, Pers.). It is easily recognized by its huge, round leaves (sometimes two feet across and a favorite sunning place, by the way, for water snakes) lifted high above the water on foot-

Water Chinquapin CSelumho luteaj

stalks attached to the center of the concave leaf, and its showy, pale yellow, papery flowers of numerous petals curving upward to be succeeded by curious, flat-topped, pitted seed-vessels. It is an American cousin of the famous lotus of India and oriental ro- mance. To the American Indian, however, it seems

34

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

never to have appealed as a flower of contemplation, but quite prosaically as an addition — and an im- portant one — to his dinner table. In this role he found it trebly useful: iirst, because of the young leaves and footstalks which may be turned to ac- count in the same way a« spinach; secondly, because of the ripened seeds which, roasted or boiled, are palatable and nutritious with a taste that has given rise to the popular name Water Chinquapin; and thirdly, because of the large tubers, weighing some- times half a pound each, which, when baked, are sweet and mealv with a flavor somewhat like a sw^eet potato. This is the plant whose flower is rather exuberantly referred to by Longfellow in ^'Evan- geline ' ' :

"Resplendent in beauty, the lotus

Lifted her golden crown above the heads of the boatmen."

Though the customary habitat of this Nelumbo is the Mis'sissippi basin, some isolated stations for it are known near the north Atlantic coast, notably in the Connecticut and Delaware Valleys, suggesting the view that it mav have been introduced into such localities and cultivated by the Indian inhabitants. However the fact mav be, its value as a food source is such as would have warranted such introduction.

35

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

The aroids — a plant family abundant in the tropics and of which several species, as the taro of the Pacific, possess nutritious, starchy, tuberous roots of importance as human foods — are represented in the United States by two or three plants of proved value. One of these is the Grolden Club {Orontium aquaticum, L.), whose flower spikes of a rich, bright yellow, lifted above velvet}^ green, strap-like leaves from which water rolls as from a duck's back, are a familiar sight in the spring in ponds and marshes along the Atlantic coast. The bulbous rootstock, when cooked, is possessed of considerable nutriment, but owing to its deep seat in the muck is difficult of extraction. The ripened seeds, which resemble peas, are more easily gathered, and both whites and Indians have included them in their diet. Accord- ing to Peter Kalm, an observant and inquisitive Swede whose book of travels in the North American Colonies in 1748 is still an interesting narrative to any who enjoy a look into the vanished past, the dried seeds, not the fresh, should be used, and they must be boiled and re-boiled repeatedly before they are fit to eat ; yet his Swedish acquaintances thought it worth their while to do so.

Of even greater interest is another aroid, the Arrow Arum or Virginia Tuckaho (Peltandra Vir-

36

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

ginica, [L] Kuntli, and perhaps the nearly related species P. alba, Raf., of the Southern States, a plant with large, arrow-shaped leaves and inconspicuous flowers enveloped in a green spathe. PeUandra Vir- ginica is connnon in shallow waters of the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Florida. I have never dug up the rootstock, about which I find the recorded descriptions differ. Havard, in his "Food Plants of the North American Indians," describes it, doubt- less rightly, as short, deep-seated, sometimes six inches in diameter and weighing five or six pounds. As in the case of all aroids, the raw flesh of the root- stock is exceedingly acrid, indeed poisonous; but when dried and thoroughly cooked, it is found to have lost this objectionable principle, and in this state is a starchy food of proved nutrition. I think it is this plant that is meant in Purchas's Pilgrimage, where in the delicious English of the day record is made of the Virginians' ''Tockawhough ... of the greatness and taste of a potato, which passeth a fiery purgation before they may eate it, being poison whiles it is raw.'' The approved treatment ai:)pears to have been to steam it in the aboriginal heated pit, covered over with earth and left undisturbed for a day or two. Similarly the familiar Jack-in-the-Pul- pit {Arisaema triphyllum, Torr.), whose small,

37

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

turnip-shaped corm, bitten into raw, stings the tongue like red hot needles, becomes thoroughly tamed when dried and cooked, and its starchy con-

J N^ ..

f,,^^) jy^

^\%'^

JACK-IX-THE-PULPIT

(Arisaema triphyllumj

tent was once a source of bread to the Seneca In- dians.

The name Tuckaho has also been applied to a sub-

38

EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS

terranoan fungus (Pachyma Cocos, Fries), often found attached to old tree roots in tlie Southern States. It resembles roughly a cocoanut, though somethnes of more irregular shape. Inside the browii rind is a finn, white meat, which would be quite insipid, except for a trace of sweetness that is present. Its most common name is Indian Bread, because of the Indian use of it as a food. It is de- void of starch and seems of questionable nutritive value. Another subterranean parasite, though not a fungus, that is of genuine worth as an edible, is the curious Sand Food {Animohroma Sonorae, Torr.), abundant in sandhills of southern. Arizona and across the Mexican line in the dunes bordering on the Gulf of California, where it is called camote de los medanos. It consists underground of a slender, fleshy, leafless but scaly stem, two to three feet long, while above the sand during the flowering season in the spring is a small, funnel-like top on which the tiny, purple blossoms appear. After flowering, the overground part mthers and disappears, and the plant presents no sign of its existence except to the experts who know where to dig. The subterranean stem is tender, juicy and sweet — a refreshing and luscious morsel, meat and drink in one. It may be eaten either raw or roasted, and is relished by red-

39

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

men and white alike. Mr. Carl Lumlioltz in his in- teresting book ''New Trails in Mexico" tells of an Indian who lived almost entirely on Ammobroma, being able to find it out of season — a remarkable testimony to the nutritiousness of the plant and the abstemiousness of the Indian !

The creeping rootstocks of the common Cat-tail {Typha latifolia, L.) which covers great areas of our swamp lands throughout the United States, hold a nutritious secret, too, for they contain a core of al- most solid starch. They w^ere dug and dried in for- mer times by IndianB, wdio ground them into a meal. A recent analvsis of such meal bv one of the Gov- ernment chemists showed it to contain about the same amount of protein as is in rice- and corn- flours, but less fat. It may make a useful mixture with the ordinarv flours, and be substituted for corn- starch in puddings, as it seems entirely palatable.

40

CHAPTER III

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE, AND HOW THEY HAVE BEEN UTILIZED

The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush Lays her full mess before j^ou.

Shakespeare.

THE Spanish conquest of Mexico and Peru brought to the knowledge of the white race a number of vegetable foods that are to-day on every American table — such as Indian corn, the potato, the pepper, and certain varieties of beans. Others are still unknown to the world at large. Among the latter that Cortes found in every-day use in Mexico was a square-stemmed, blue-flowered herb, which the chroniclers of that time called Chian or Cilia. It seems to have ranked in popularity with staples like maize, frijoles, mague}^ cacao and chili; and was gro^\^l with these in the fields and floating gardens of the Aztecs, for the sake of the small but numerous nutritious seeds of a pleasant, nutty flavor. Writers on the products of the New World

41

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

in the first couple of centuries of the Spanish domina- tion always speak of Chia with respect. Later, when upper California came in for settlement, the diarist of PortolcVs expedition to the Bay of San Francisco specifies it as among the gifts offered by the Indians to their white visitors; and archaeologists, grubbing in prehistoric graves in Southern California, have turned up deposits of the seed left as viaticum of departed souls, which attest the antiquity of its use within the limits of the United States. Even to-day, shopkeepers in the Spanish quarters of our own Southwestern cities as well as street venders in the towns of Mexico include Chia as part of their stock in trade.

One wonders what this all but forgotten food can be.

It is the name applied to at least five or six dis- tinct species of plants, of somewhat different aspects, most of them belonging to the genus Salvia. The seeds are flattish and more or less shining, suggest- ing small flaxseed, of whose character they some- what partake, being oily and mucilaginous. For human consumption they should be parched and ground, w^hen they may advantageously be added to corn-meal, and this mixture made with water into a mush was a favorite item in the old Mexican

42

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

dietary. Some of the present-day Indians of Southern California mix Chia meal with ground wheat, imparting to the latter a delicate, nut-like flavor, though the mucilaginous character of Chia disposes the mixture to gumminess. Pure Chia meal, mixed with water, cold or hot, swells to several times the original bulk, and is best eaten as a semi- fluid gruel. Old time travelers in our desert regions used to provide themselves with this meal, which constituted an easily portable and highly nutritious ration eaten dry with the addition of a little sugar. The species indigenous to the United States are Salvia Coliimhariae, Benth., and S. carduacea, Benth. Both are winter annuals native to the Pacific side of the continent. The former is the more common, found in dry ground throughout Southern Cali- fornia and adjacent parts of Nevada, Arizona and Mexico. The small, blue flowers, crowded in dense, prickly, globular heads, interrupted upon the stalk (which passes through the midst like a skewer), ap- pear from March to June, and the seeds are ripe a month or so later. They are easily gathered by bending the stalks over a bowl or finely woven basket, and beating the heads mth a paddle or fan, which shatters out the seeds. That is the Indian method; but when the plants grow plentifully, as

43

CniA (Salvia ColumhariaeJ

44

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

they sometimes do as thick as grass in a field, or as they may be made to do by sowing the seed in cul- tivated ground, they can be cut, threshed and win- nowed like flax or wheat. ^

A wild food plant that has had a remarkable in- fluence in geographic nomenclature is the Wild Rice {Zizania aquatica, L.). It is the folle avoine of the French voyageurs, and the meyiomin of the North- west Indians, to one tribe of w^hom — the Alenominees — it gave a name. Mr. Albert E. Jenks, whose exhaustive monograph, "The Wild Rice Gatherers of the Upper Lakes, "^ is a mine of information about the plant, instances over 160 places (counties, townships, towns, railway stations, rivers, creeks, lakes and ponds) which have borne a name synony- mous wit'h this same Wild Rice. It is of the same family as the rice of commerce, and is a species of annual grass found growing by the acre, even the hundreds of acres, in ponds, swamps and still water- ways, both fresh and brackish, in virtually every State of the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, and also in Japan and China. It is exceptionally abundant in the regions bordering on the Great

1 An important use of Chia is as the basis of a soft drink. See the chapter on Beverage Plants,

2 Printed in the 19th Ann. Report, Bur. Amer. Ethnology.

45

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Wild Rice (Zizania aquatica)

Lakes both in American and Canadian territory — a beautiful, stately grass, rising from two to twelve feet above the water and bearing in summer ample panicles of delicate, yellomsh-green blossoms of two

46

An Indian of the Great Lakes Region threshing wild rice by means of a dasher-Hke stick.

(Courtesy of the Nezv York Botanical Gardens.)

WILD SEEDS OF EOOD VALUE

sexes. These are succeeded in September by the purplish spikes of rijoened seeds occupying the tip of the panicle. The seeds are slender and cylindri- cal, one-half to three-fourths of an inch long, within a long-bearded husk and attached so loosely to the branchlet that bears them that they drop at a touch. They must needs be gathered, therefore, with great care or many may be lost. The Indians customarily harvest them just before they attain complete ripe- ness, visiting the rice swamps with canoes, which they push ahead of them, pulling the fruiting stalks over the hold of the canoe and beating the seeds into it with a stick.^ The grain is then taken ashore where it is dried, either in the sun or by artificial heat upon racks under which a slow fire is kept burn- ing. The husk must then be threshed off, which may be done by pounding with a heavy-ended stick in a bucket; and finally the chaff is got rid of by winnowing. The seeds are then ready for use or for storing away. Readers of old journals of the so- journers in the Northwestern wilderness wdll recall the important role played by such stores of Wild

3 The best results are attained by first tyiiif; the standing stalks together at the head into small bunches. This is done a couple of weeks before maturity and serves to conserve the grain and lessen the depredations of the birds — particularly the bobolinks — which are famous rice eaters.

47

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Eice (or Wild Oats, as the seed was as often but improperly called) in fighting hunger through the long, remorseless, northern winters.

The food value of Wild Rice is high. It is rich in carbohydrates (starch and sugar) and is also well stocked with flesh-producing proteids. Indeed, as a nutrient, it seems quite in the class of its cousin, the cultivated rice; and, like the latter, it swells w^ith boiling, so that a little goes a long way. The Indians use it generally in mixture with stews. If cooked alone, two parts of water to one of rice is the usual proportion, and from a half to an entire hour is re- quired for boiling it. White people who test Wild Eice usually pronounce it palatable, particularly in the form of a mush served with cream and sugar, and Mr. Jenks reports a wilderness soup made of "Wild Eice and blueberries that sounds as if it ought to be good even in New York.

Two other water plants should be noted for their valuable edible seeds. One is the Water Chinqua- pin, mentioned in the previous chapter because of its useful roots, but which owes its popular name to the more obvious virtue of its palatable, nutlike seeds. These, boiled or baked, are considered by many the equal of chestnuts. The other is the Great Yellow Pond Lily of the northwestern Pacific Coast

48

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

(Nuphar poly sepal um, Engelin.), whose globose, yellow flowers, sometimes as much as five inches in diameter, are a frequent and charming sight afloat on the bosom of shallow lakes and marshy ponds of the coast region from northern California to British Columbia. The globular seed vessels are full grown in summer, and it is the practice of the Indians to gather them in July and August, and, after drying the pods, to extract the seeds, which may then be kept indefinitely. These are commonly prepared for consumption by tossing them about in a frying pan over a fire until they swell and crack open some- what as popcorn does, which they resemble in taste. They may be eaten thus out of hand, or ground into meal for making bread or mush.^

The common Sunflower of our gardens, whose monster heads appeal to esthetes because of a par- ticular style of languid beauty they possess, and to birds and chickens because of their luscious, oleagin- ous seeds, is but a coddled form of one of our com- monest wild plants — the Annual Sunflower {Heli' antlius annuus, L.). This species is indigenous throughout western North America, and sheets summer and autumnal plains for miles with the gen-

4 Coville, "Notes on Plants Used by the Klamath Indians of Oregon."

49

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

eroiis gold of its cheery blossoms. The dark gray or blackish seeds of the wild plant are much smaller than those of the cultivated form, but are exceed- ingly numerous, with a white, oily, floury content that is rich in nutriment. They used to form an im- portant part of the dietary of the Plains Indians, who sometimes cultivated the jolants amid their corn. The ripe seeds were parched and ground into meal, and bread made of this meal has been spoken of with approbation by white travelers — even as the equal of corn bread. There can be no doubt of its value in situations where the flours of civilization are difficult to procure. As a source of oil sunflower seed is by no means insignificant, yielding, according to Havard, about twenty per cent, of an excellent table article. To most of us, indeed, the Wild Sun- flower is a plant of unsuspected uses: its stalks possess a fibre of some worth and its flowers are good honey producers as well as a basis of a yellow dye said to be fast.^ In our Spanish Southwest the term pinole is in use

5 Helianthus annuus is a coarse, much branched plant, three to six feet tall, the rough stem frequently mottled, the root (being annual) easily pulled up. The large flower heads are yellow-rayed with a dark center that is an inch or so across. Leaves petioled, ovate, six inches or more long, with toothed edges, rough to the touch. The seeds of the closely related species, H. petiolaris, Nutt., are similarly useful.

50

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

to mean meal made from the seeds of wild plants. Of these a great number have been utilized in past times for this purpose by the aborigines, and still are to some extent by old Indians whose taste for the pabulum of the long ago has not been lost. There is, it seems, a certain tang to the native vegetable foods of the wild comparable to the gaminess of mid flesh, that meets a need in untamed man not satis- fied by the suaver products of civilization. The preparation of pinole is in a general way as follows : Provided with a large gathering basket of close weave and a paddle, usually of rough basket-work, the harvester beats the seeds — one sort at a time — into the basket, until a sufficient quantity is ob- tained. The chaff is then separated by sifting or by w^innoAving in a light breeze, and any prickles or hairiness natural to the seeds are singed off by drop- ping hot pebbles or live coals among them in a shal- low basket and tossing all about at a lively rate. More prosaically, the same end may be attained with a frying pan kept agitated over a flame. This singeing process, moreover, serves to parch or partially cook the seeds, which are then ground in a mortar and the husks winnowed out. The resid- uum of meal, mixed with a little salt, may be eaten dry without further preparation. Indians in old

51

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

times frequently made forced marches of a day on no other ration than a small sack of pinole, con- sumed in instalments as they traveled. ^' More often, however, it is moistened with water and eaten as mush or thinner as a gruel, or baked in the form of cakes. While the different sorts of seeds are col- lected and ground separately, it is not unusual to combine them for consumption, as taste may dictate."^

It would be tedious to enumerate all the plants which have been found of sufficient food value to grind into pinole, but the following may be men- tioned as of especial interest and worth :

Of wide distribution in our Far West are two annual species of the homely Goosefoot or Pigweed. One is Chenopodium Fremontii, Wats., with more or less mealy leaves of triangular shape, a plant usually a foot or two high but sometimes attaining in over- flowed lands a height of six feet or over ; the other is C. leptophyllitm, Nutt., with very narrow leaves that are scarcely mealy. The latter species occurs also in seashore sands of the Atlantic coast from Con- necticut to New Jersey. The inconspicuous green

6 For white consumption, the digestibility of this ration is im- proved by thorough and repeated grinding and parching after each operation.

7 V. K. Chesnut: "Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California." Printed as Contributions from the U. S. National Herbarium, Vol. VII, No. 3.

52

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

flowers of both species, clustered in panicled spikes, are succeeded in late summer and autumn by an abundance of small black seeds of farinaceous con- tent. It stimulates our respect for these humble, weedy plants to know that the seeds of an allied species, Chenopodium Quinoa, have from the dawn of history been a valued food of the native Peruvians and Bolivians, and have been cultivated by those races. The Zuhi Indians of New Mexico, according to Stevenson, have a tradition that the seeds of C. leptophyllum were one of their principal foodstuffs in the infancy of the race before the gods sent them the corn plant. Afterw^ards, Chenopodium meal mixed with corn meal and salt, made into a stiff batter and moulded into balls or pats and steamed, became a favorite dish with epicurean Zuhis.^ The seeds of a prostrate, mat-like Amaranth {Amaran- thiis hlitoides, Wats.), a weedy plant with spikelets of greenish, chaffy flowers, native to the Eocky Mountain region and westward, also formed an im- portant item in the ancient diet of the Zufiis, who believed that the original seeds of it had been brought up from the underworld at the time of the race's emergence into the light of day. In later years, the

8 "Ethnobotany of the Zuui Indians." 30th Ann. Report Bur. Amer. Ethnology.

USEFUL Vs'ILl) PLANTS

meal made from these seeds has been used, like that from Chenopodium, in admixture with corn meal. Similarly useful to desert Indians are the seeds of species of Saltbush {Atriplex canescens, James, A. lentifonnis, Wats., A. PoivelUi, Wats., A. conferti- foUa, Wats., etc.).

White Sage (Audihertia polystaclujay Benth.), one of the most famous of Pacific Coast honey plants, produces slender, wandlike thyrses of pale blossoms whose seeds, though small and husky, are exceed- ingly numerous and rich in oil. They are still gathered by Southern California Indians, who bend the plants over a large basket and beat the seeds into it by striking with a seed-beater, as described before when treating of Chia. The seeds, mixed with wheat, are parched in a frying pan, and all is reduced to a fine meal by pounding in a mortar. This stirred in water with a sprinkling of salt is then ready to be eaten, or drunk, according as the mixture is thick or thin. It, too, is called pinole. The sage seeds have much the taste of Chia, the botanical relationship be- ing close, but they are not mucilaginous.

Several species of wild grasses are utilizable for pinole. One of these is the Wild Oat (Avena fatua, L.), suspected of being the progenitor of the culti- vated oat, and abundant in certain parts of the West,

54

Red Maple (Acer rubruni), the source of a dark blue dye in vogue among the Pennsylvania colonists. (See page 226.)

{Courtesy of the New York Botanical Gardcus.)

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

particularly on the Pacific Coast where extensive areas are covered with it as with a crop. The seed resembles the cultivated grain, but is so hairy as to stick in one's throat and choke one. After thoroughly singeing off the hairs in a pan or basket tray, the grain may be reduced to flour, and used like ordinary oat-flour. Another pinole grass is Ely mils triticoides, Buckl., locally known as ''wild w^heaf and "squaw grass.'' It is a tall, shm grass w^ith usually glaucous stems, and grows densely in moist meadows and alkaline soil throughout the Pacific Coast and eastward to Colorado and Arizona. An allied sjDecies, more robust, with very dense flower-spikes of a foot long and larger seeds, serves a similar purpose. It is commonly called ''rye grass" and is the Elymus condensatus, Presl., of the botanists. It, too, is abundant in damp, alkaline ground and along streams throughout the Far West, and Mr. Coville ^ has suggested that it may be worthy of exiDcrimentation as a cultivated grain for that region.

A Southwestern grass of wide distribution, par- ticularly in the deserts, in sandy places (both moist and dry) and on arid hillsides, is the so-called Indian

9 "Plants Used by the Klamath Indians,'' Washington, Gov't Print- ing Office, 1897.

55

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Millet or Sand-grass {Eriocoma cuspidata, Nutt.). It is a perennial, growing in bunches a foot or two high, with peculiar panicles whose thread-like, twist- ing branchlets are tipped with husks containing small, blackish seeds, which have long been valued by desert Indians for flour making. This is one of the wild grains upon which the Zuni Indians of New Mexico have been in the habit of relying in times of failure of their cultivated crops; and Dr. Edward Palmer tells of parties of Zuhis being seen as far as i^w miles from their villages carr^dng enormous loads of these seeds for winter provision. Still an- other desert grass with edible seeds, but restricted in its distribution in our country to Southern Cali- fornia, is Panicum Urvilleanuniy Kunth, which the desert Coahuillas call song-wal. It is a stout per- ennial, one to two feet high, the whole plant, includ- ing the seeds, more or less hairy, and is quite near of kin to the millet of the Old World, whose nutri- tious properties it shares.

Among the various gummy plants of the Pacific Coast known there as Tarweeds is one called Chile Tarweed {Madia sativa, Molina). It is a heavy- scented annual, one to three feet high, sticky and hair}% with rather narrow, entire leaves, and incon- spicuous, pale yellow flowers of the daisy type, the

56

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

rays barely a quarter of an inch long, expanding only at evening and earh^ moniing. This and some kindred species have been utilized by the California Indians for pinole. The Chile Tarweed has a spe- cial interest in the fact that in Chile, where it is also abundant, it has been cultivated from very early times. The seeds, when scalded, yield under com- pression a considerable percentage of a mild, agree- able oil, suitable for table purposes, soap-making, and notably for lubricating machinery, as it does not solidify short of 10° Fahr. Some eighty years ago, the plant w^as introduced into cultivation in Europe, where, I believe, it is still grown to some extent, and an oil-cake is made of the seeds for cattle.

To the traveler in the hill country of central and Southern California and western Arizona a familiar shrub is a species of wild plum with shining, ever- green, holly-like leaves {Pruniis ilicifolia, Walp.), maturing in autumn an abundance of crimson or dark purple fruits in size and appearance like small damson plums. They are disappointing, however, in that they are almost entirely stone, though such thin covering of pulp as there is, is pleasant enough to the taste. It is an interesting fact in connection with the Indian's inventive genius that this fruit be-

57

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

came long ago one of his important food sources; though it was not the pulp but the apparently hope- less pit that was turned to principal account. Gath- ering the plums in late suromer, the Indians would

I SLAY

(Prunus ilicifolia)

spread them in the sun until thoroughly dry, when the stones would be cracked and the kernels ex- tracted. These, are bitter and astringent like acorns, and at first blush as unpromising as the uncracked pits themselves. When rid of that deleterious prin- ciple, however, the kernels are nutritious and diges-

58

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

tible (by Indian organs, at least), and have always formed a cherished item in the native dietarv, wherever the shrub grows. It is quite generally known by its Spanish-Indian name islay. Barrows, writing of this food,^^* states that the kernels are crushed in a mortar, leached in the sand basket (pre- sumably like acorn-meal) and boiled as mush; but an intelligent old Indian of Mission Santa Ines, one Fernando Cardenas, who is familiar with the customs practised by Southern California Indians, has in- formed me that the process as observed by him ^vas to put the unground kernels into a bag and dip the sack in hot water again and again, until the meats became sweet. They were then ground, fashioned into balls and eaten so with great gusto. As I have personally never seen either process, I record both for the curious to test for themselves.

It would seem reasonable to expect edible seeds of many of the wild members of the useful Pea family, wliich is abundantly represented in all parts of the countrv. As a matter of fact, few^ seem to have been found ^vorth while even by Indians of the most catholic taste. The Groundnut, Ai^ios tube- rosa, has been mentioned in a previous chapter as

10 "The Etlinobotany of the CoaliuiUa Indians of Southern Cali- fornia."

59

Hog Peanut

( Amphicarpaea monoica)

60

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

having been utilized, both seeds and tubers; and something should be said of another leguminous plant popularly called Hog Peanut {Amphicarpaea monoica, Nutt.). It is a slender vine with trifoliate leaves, the stem clothed with brownish hairs, and is frequently met wdth in damp woodlands and thickets throughout the eastern half of the United States. In late summer it is graced wath small bunches of pale purple or whitish pea-like blossoms, pen- dulous from the leaf-axils, wdiile from near the root solitary, inconspicuous flowers on thread-like stems put out and bury themselves loosely in the ground, or creep shyly beneath a covering of fallen leaves. The showy upper blossoms are mostly abortive, though a few manage to develop short pods contain- ing three or four small purple seeds apiece, edible w^lien cooked. Of much greater worth are the sub- terranean seed-vessels which bear a single large pea in each. These peas are quite nutritious. They are mature in September and October, but retain their vitality throughout the winter, so that they may be dug even in the spring if one knows w^here to look for them.

The most valuable of all our wild legumes is doubtless the Mesquit-bean, the aUjarroha of the Mexicans. It is the product of a w^ell-known tree

61

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

(Prosopis jiili-pora, DC, and its varieties) abundant throughout the arid region on both sides of the Mexican border. It is, indeed, the characteristic tree of the Southwestern deserts, giving to those

gray wastes touches of living color very grateful to the eyes starving for the sight of a really vivid green. The pods, in shape and size resembling string beans, are produced abundantly in drooping clusters, which, ripening in late summer, become lemon yellow. The juicy pulp, in which the hard, bony seeds are embedded, is exceedingly sweet, containing, according to Havard, more than half its weight of assimilable nutritive properties, of which sugar is in the proportion of from twent3^-five to thirty per cent. All stock thrives on the pods, and it is on this account rather than on any appeal to his own stomach that the white man's regard for them is grounded ; but upon the Indian, who has ever a sweet tooth, they have a strong claim as human food. There is before me, as I write, a jar of coarse mesquit

62

Mesquit (Prosopis julifiora)

7 .^K<' •';>••

Mesquit (Prosopis julijiora)

63

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

meal, and it is as cloyingly fragrant as so much mo- lasses. Mr. Edward H. Davis, of Mesa Grande, California, to whom I am indebted for the sijecimen, writes concerning it :

**The mesquit meal is used to-day by the desert Indians the same as centuries ago. The pod i'S pounded up in wooden mortars made from the mesquit-tree trunk hollowed out by fire and set firmly in the ground. A long, slender, stone pestle is used to pound with. The beans are so brittle that enough for dinner can be prepared in eight to ten minutes. The meal is mixed with Avater and eaten so, being sweet and nourishing. The edible part is the pulp of the pods only; the seeds are not diges- tible by either man or beast, but will pass through the digestive tract unchanged. However, by pour- ing warm water over the seeds a sweetish, rather lemon-tasting drink is made and much relished by the desert Coahuillas.'^

The Pima Indians of Southern Arizona formerly used mesquit meal as a makeshift for sugar, mingling it with their wheat or corn pinole to sweeten the latter.^^ The raw beans picked from the tree may be chewed with enjoyment and some nutritive profit,

11 John Russell Bartlett, "Personal Narrative of Explorations in Texas, New Mexico, California, etc." Vol. II: 217.

64

WILD SEEDS OF FOOD VALUE

as one travels. The quality of mingled acidity and sweetness which they possess before perfect ma- turity acts also as a thirst i^reventive, much as do the pods of the carob-tree of the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, the Spanish term algarroha applied in Mexico and our Southwest to the Mesquit bean, is a case of transference, algarroho being the word used in Spain for the carob-tree. A feature of the Mesquit-bean, by the way, to be reckoned with, is the fact that the pods are a favorite resort of -a species of pea-weevil (Bruchus) for the deposit of their eggs. As a consequence Mesquit meal is par- ticularly liable to infestation by these small beings to a degree that is somewhat of a shock to white sensibilities, though the Indians are indifferent to their presence; yet, I suppose, after all, it is no w^orse than skippers in over-ripe cheese, which some white ejoicures delight in.^^

The Mexicans make a sort of gruel, called atole de mezquite, by boiling the mesquit pods, mashing them to a pulp in fresh water, and straining. A nutritious beverage is thus obtained, agreeable to some tastes. So altogether useful is the mesquit tree that it is not surprising to learn that it figures

12 A useful by-product of the Mesquit-tree is a gum that exudes from the liruised bark and may be used for the purpose of gum arable, which it much resembles.

65

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

in the folklore of some regions where it grows. In Mexico a curious tradition is current to this effect: Long before the Spanish Conquest, the Apostle Thomas, in his heavenly home, became in- terested in the Aztecs, and descending to earth appeared to them in the guise of the Mexican hero- god Quetzacoatl and preached the gospel. The Aztecs heard the doctrine but coldly, and so San Tomas in most unchristian dudgeon departed, leav- ing the curse of sterility upon the plain of Anahuac and turning all its cacao trees into mesquites, which remain mesquites to this day !

Closely related to the Mesquit-bean and of similar utility is the Screw-bean, called by the Mexicans tornilla. It is a curious, slender, spirall3^-twisted pod, borne in clusters, upon a small tree {Prosopis pubescens, Benth.) having much the same geographi- cal range as the mesquit. The Screw-bean is even more sugary than the Mesquit-bean, and it may be made by boiling to yield a very fair sort of molasses. "Water in which a small quantity of t-he meal is soaked makes a palatable and nutritious beverage. In mak- ing Screw-bean meal, the Indians grind the whole pods, seeds and all.

66

CHAPTER IV

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD AND SOME OTHER WILD NUTS

Happy age to which the ancients gave the name of golden. . . . None found it needful, in order to obtain sustenance, to re- sort to other labor than to stretch out his hand and take it from the sturdy live-oak, which liberally invited him.

Don Quixote.

CERTAIN nuts growing wild in the United States, such as the chestnut, the hickories, the pecan, the beech-nut and the walnuts, have secured so fimi a place in our civilized dietar}^ that every- one knows them, and they need not be discussed here. Perhaps, though, we have not exhausted all their culinary possibilities. For instance, William Bar- tram tells us that the Creek Indians in his dav pounded the shellbark nuts, cast them into boiling water and then passed the mass through a veiy fine strainer. The thicker, oily part of the liquid thus preserved w^as rich like fresh cream, and w^as called by a name signifying ^Miickory milk." It formed an ingredient in much of their cookery, especially in

67

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

hominy and corn cakes. Peter Kalm speaks of a similar practice observed by him with hickoiy nuts and black walnuts. A cooking oil is also said to have been obtained from acorns by some Eastern tribes, the nuts being pounded, boiled in water containing maple-wood ashes, and the oil skimmed off.

Of the nuts of our country unregarded by the w^hite population from the standpoint of human food value, the noble genus of oaks supplies the most im- portant. Every farmer realizes the w^orth of acorns for fattening hogs, but in America onij the Lidians, I believe, have taken seriously to utilizing them for human consumption ; and it is significant that among the fattest of all Lidians are those — the Calif ornians — wdiose staple diet from prehistoric times has been acorn meal. There is, to be sure, a difference in acoiTLS. All are not bitter. Several species of oak produce nuts w^hose sweetness and edibility in the raw state make it easy to believe the acorn's cousin- ship to the chestnut and beechnut. Li this class are the different sorts of Chestnut Oaks, easily recog- nized by the resemblance of their leaves to the foliage of the chestnut tree; and of these perhaps the best, in respect of acorns, is Quercus Michaiixii, Nutt. — commonly known as Basket Oak or Cow Oak. It is a large tree, indigenous to the Southern Atlantic

68

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD

States in situations near streams and swamps, and ripening in September or October plump, sweet nuts an inch and a half long.

Oddly enough it is not the sweet acorns but the bitter that have played the really noteworthy part in aboriginal history. The Indians of the Pacific Coast did not become maize growers until after the white occupation of their country, preferring to accept from the hand of indulgent Nature such nutrients as came ready made, among w^hich the abounding fruit- age of extensive oak forests formed, and still forms, a conspicuous part. The acorns of all species of oaks indigenous to that coast are more or less stored with tannin, which imparts to the taste an unwhole- some bitterness and astringency as disagreeable to red men as to white. Some inventive Indian — and doubtless it was a woman, the aboriginal harvester as w^ell as cook — long ago hit upon a simple but effective way of extracting the deleterious principle ; that is, washing the finely ground acorns in water. The process of preparing the acorn for human use, as still practiced in some parts of California, is as follows :

In autumn v/hen the nuts are ripe but not yet fallen, they are gathered in baskets and barley sacks, brought home and laid in the sun to dry. Some are

69

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

then stored away for future use in the house or in huge storage baskets set outdoors on platforms that are raised on legs above the reach of rodents, and form a picturesque feature of primitive rancherias. The acorns for immediate consumption are divested of the shells by cracking, and the kernels then re- duced to the finest possible powder by grinding in the stone mortar, it having been found that digesti- bility depends upon thorough grinding.

The next step is to get rid of the bitterness, which persists through all the milling.

Every acorn-eating family maintains beside the nearest water a primitive leaching plant, varying more or less in the details of its make-up, but con- sisting primarily of a loose, concave nest of twigs, leaves or pine needles raised a foot or two above the ground and ensuring perfect drainage. Over this is stretched a piece of porous cloth — a clean burlap will do — sagging, basin-like, in the middle, upon which the meal is spread evenly about half an inch thick. Water, warm or cold, is then poured carefully over this and allowed to filter through, more being added from time to time until the bitter- ness is entirel}^ leached away. The length of time required for this differs according to the variety of acorns used, some being less bitter than others.

70

(/I

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD

Two or three hours usually sullice. The result is a doughy mass, which is then transferred to a i)ut with water added, and boiled up for mush. It swells in cooking to about twice its original bulk, and when done is a pale chocolate color. In taste it is rather flat but with a suggestion of nuttiness that becomes distinctly agreeable even to some white palates. Judging from my own experience with it, I should pronounce it about as good as an average breakfast- food mush. Cream and sugar and a pinch of salt are considered needful concomitants by most white consumers. Formerlv the Indians baked a sort of bread from acorn dough in their primitive tireless cooker — that is, in shallow pits first lined vnili thor- oughly heated rocks. For this purpose the dough was usually, though not always, mixed with red clay in proportion of about five per cent., according to Mr. Chesnut, from whose valua1)le monograph, ^^ Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., California," I have drawn for this statement, — the purpose of the clay being apparently to remove the last trace of tannin remaining in the dough. Upon a bed of green leaves placed at the bottom of the pit the dough was laid, covered with another layer of leaves, upon which a super-layer of heated stones was put, and all then covered with dirt, to

71

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

remain over night. When removed after about twelve hours of slow cooking, the bread was coal black if the admixture of clay had been used or red- dish bro^\ai otherwise, and of the consistency of soft cheese, hardening, however, with exposure. Such bread is oily and heavy, but noticeably sweet in taste. The latter characteristic is doubtless due to sugar developed by the prolonged, slow steaming.

Dr. C. Hart Merriam, in the '^National Geographic Magazine" for August, 1918, tells of a simpler way of making acorn bread as observed by him. The hot acorn-mush is dipped, a small quantity at a time, from the general stock and plunged into cold water, which causes the lumps to contract and stiffen. The ^'loaves" so made are then placed on a rock to harden and dry out, after which they may be kept for weeks until consumed. The same au- thority speaks of the excellence of a bread made from a mixture of acorn-flour and corn-meal, in the proportion of one of the former to four of the latter.

While the acorns of any species may be utilized for human need, there is a distinct choice exercised by the Indians, the preference being based appar- ently on relative richness in oil and lowness in tannin. The best liked, according to my observation, are

72

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD

the Kellogg or California Black oak (Quercus Cali- foniicay [Torr.] Cooper), the Coast Live oak (Q. agrifoUa, Nee), the Valparaiso or Canyon Live oak (Q. chrysolepis, Lieb), and the colossal Valley White oak {Q. lohata, Nee). An analysis of acorn meal made from the last named species is quoted by Chesnut as showing in percentage 5.7 protein, 18.6 fat, 65 carbohydrates (starch, sugar, etc.). Though the Californians are regarded as among the lowest of our North American aborigines in native culture, their self-devised treatment of the acorn to make of it a wholesome food staple is entitled to the greatest respect. Stephen Powers, in his classic work on the Tribes of California, finds in one use of acorn mush an aboriginal discovery of the principle of the Prus- sian pea-sausage ; and quotes the practice of a central California tribe, who, upon starting a journey, would pack in their burden baskets a quantity of the mush. When stopping for refreshment, it was only necessary to dilute a portion of this with water and dinner was ready. A squaw, the traditional burden- bearer, could carry thirty pounds, enough to last two persons perhaps a fortnight. Naturally so im- portant an element as the acorn in the tribal life became associated with religious ceremonial as well as incorporated in native poetry; and the approach

73

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

of the autumnal gathering of the nuts was celebrated with dances and songs of thanksgiving and rejoicing. One of these songs, quoted by Powers, is Englished thus:

"The acorns come down from heaven; I plant the short acorns in the valley; I plant the long acorns in the valley; I sprout, I, the black acorn sprout; I sprout."

Such dances (and they still have some vogue in the remoter parts of the State) were night atfairs in the open, stamped out in the glow of blazing log fires to the accompaniment of minor melodies of fascinating appeal, the words of the songs repeated endlessly and emphasized with dramatic gestures, until the morning star appeared in the east. To this day the oak groves in those parts of California where any considerable Lidian population still lingers are invested with traditional acorn rights, and recognized by general consent as the harvest grounds of particular communities, none poaching upon the preserves of another.

Traveling in mountainous regions of the West where coniferous forests prevail, one sometimes comes upon the remains of large camp-fires strewTi roundabout with charred pine-cones and twig ends.

74

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD

These are associated with another sort of nut^ har- vest, that of the Pinon or Pine-iint, the phimp, oily seed of certain species of the Far AVestern pines. The most esteemed nut-pines are the Two-leaved Pine {Pinus edulis, Engelm.), a low, round-topped tree, generally kno^\ai by its Spanish name pinon and common from Southern Colorado to Texas and west- ward to Arizona and Utah; the closelv related One- leaved Pine (P. monophyUa, Torr.), the pinon of the Great Basin region and desert slopes of the Cali- fornia Sierras; the Digger Pine (P. Sahiniana, Dough), a widely distributed species of the Cali- fornia foothills and lower mountain slopes ; and the stately Sugar Pine (P. Lamhertiaua, Dough), whose huge cones are frequently a foot and a half long or more. The ^^nuts" of these species vary from one-half to three-quarters of an inch in length, with thin shells easy but rather tedious to crack. The meat is delicious in flavor even to white people, tender, sweet, and highly nutritious. They are, moreover, of easiest digestibility, so that even delicate stomachs are undisturbed by them. Under the name of pifions they are sold in towns through- out the Southwest as well as Mexico, where another

1 The word "nut" is used in this chapter in its popular sense rather than with botanical accuracy.

17)

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

species of nut-pine {Pinus cemhroides, Zucc.) is in- digenous. The Parry Pine (P. quadrifoUa, Sudw.) is another good nut-pine, abundant in some parts of lower California, but only sparingly found on the United States side of the border. John Muir, in his picturesque way, characterizes the nut-pine forests as ^'the bountiful orchards of the red man.''

Pine seeds are ripe in autumn, and the Lidian method of gathering them is to cut or knock the un- opened cones from the trees and then roast them in a camp fire. This serves to dry out the pitch and open the cones, from which the nuts are then easily extracted. The pinon harvest among the South- western Indians is a joyous time, and what they do not themselves consume is readily turned into money at the traders'. Dr. Edward Palmer, a veteran botanical collector w^hose notes are enlivened by many a human touch, describes a scene of this kind which he witnessed among the Cocopahs of Lower California. ^'It was an interesting sight to see these children of nature with their dirty, laughing faces, parching and eating the pine nuts ... by the hand- ful. ... At last we had the privilege of seeing prim- itive Americans gathering their uncultivated crop from primeval groves." Though edible raw, the nuts are preferably toasted, which may be done very

76

THE ACORN AS HUMAN FOOD

comfortably in a vessel kept in motion over a slow fire, as peanuts are heated. Not only is the flavor improved thereby, but the sweetness of the kernel is ensured for a longer time.

The value of the pinou was quickly recognized by the Spanish conquerors of New Mexico, and Fray Alonzo de Benavides in his famous Memorial to the King of Spain (1630) makes particular mention of the Pihon trees, marvelous to him '^because of their nuts so large and tender to crack and the trees and cones so small and the quantity so interminable.'* It seems that at that early day there was trade in New Mexico pinons with the Mexican capital, a thousand miles away, where, Benavides tells us, they were worth at wholesale twenty-three to twenty-four pesos the fanega. They retail to-day in city shops of our Southwest at about twenty cents per pound.

In taking leave of the pines, a word should be said about the fruits of their cousins, the Junipers of familiar habit. Although reckoned as a conifer, the Juniper bears seed vessels that are not cones in the popular acceptance of that word, but berry-like, due to the growing together of the fleshy cone- scales, with a compact pulp around the seeds. The resinous quality of these ^* berries" in most species i-enders them repugnant to the human palate, but in

77

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

a few cases this feature is much reduced and the *' berries'' are relished because of the sweet flavor of their mealy pulp. In this edible class are the fruits of the California Juniper {Jumperus Cali- fornica, Carr.), the Utah Juniper {J. Utahensis, Lem.), and the Check-barked or Alligator Juniper (J. pachyphlaea, Torr.). The first two are stunted trees or shrubs of arid regions of pure desert. The last is a tree attaining sometimes a height of fifty feet or more, abundant at rather high elevations in Arizona, New Mexico and Southwestern Texas, and remarkable for its thick, hard bark, deeply furrowed and checked in squares. The ^'berries" of all these species have been approved by Indian palates, and are eaten either raw or dried and ground into a meal and prepared as mush or cakes. Under ne- cessity they might serve to keep body and soul together, those of the Alligator Juniper being con- sidered the best. Cakes made from these are said on good authority to be palatable even to whites, and to have the merit of easy digestibility.

Little known to Americans but possessing a fas- cination all its own is the so-called Wild Hazel, Goat- nut or Sheep-nut, the fruit of a non-deciduous, gray- ish-green shrub, Shnmondsia Californica, Nutt., locally abundant along the mountain borders of the

78

Jojoba

(Simmondsia Calif ornicaj

79

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

desert in Soutliern California and extending into Arizona and northern Mexico. It is a distant cousin to the beloved boxwood of old gardens, though none but a botanist would suspect the relationship. The plant is dioecious, so that not every individual is seed-bearing — only those possessing pistillate flowers. The capsules are mature in early autumn, and, gaping open, disgorge upon the ground the oily, chocolate-browTi seeds, which are of about the size and appearance of hazelnut kernels. These, too, they somewhat resemble in taste, but are much easier of consumption because nature does the cracking for you. They are eaten with avidity by children, Indians, sheep and goats. Mexicans call them jojohas, and in Los Angeles I have seen them in the Spanish quarter in the shops of druggists, who find a steady sale for them for use in promoting the growth of deficient eyebrows! For this purpose, it seems, they are boiled, the oil extracted and this applied externally. The seed's reputation as a hair restorer, indeed, is rather extended in the South- west. Mexicans in Lower California put it to still another use, which mil be mentioned in the chapter on Beverage Plants.

According to M. Leon Dieguet in *^ Revue des Sciences Naturelles Appliquees'' (October, 1895),

80

THE ACOKN AS HUMAN FOOD

**an analysis of the fire-dried seeds shows them to contain 48.30% of fatty matter. The oil solidifies at 5°, is suitable for food and of good quality, and possesses the immense advantage of not turning rancid.'^ The shrub has been recommended for culture in the desert regions of the French Colonies of North Africa.

There is a beautiful little tree called the California Buckeye (Aesculus Calif ornica, Nutt.) which whitens with its fine thyrses of bloom the hillsides of spring near streams in central and northern California. In summer and autumn it acquires another sort of con- spicuousness due to the early dropping of its foliage, baring the limbs even in August. It then becomes a very skeleton of a tree upon which the fruits, hanging thick, look like so manj^ dry, plump figs. The leathery rind of the latter encloses one or two thin-shelled nuts, shiny and reddish brown like those of the tree^s cousins, the Buckeyes of the Middle West. To white folk these nuts, attractive as they appear, seem nevertheless devoid of food possibili- ties; indeed, in their raw state, they are known to be poisonous. That the Indian should have discov- ered how to turn them into fuel for the human machine seems, therefore, even more remarkable than the conversion of the acorn into an edible

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USEFUL WILD PLANTS

ration. Yet that is what the Indian did, by a method that consists essentially in roasting the nuts and then washing out the poison. One wonders how many prehistoric Calif ornians died martyrs in the perfect- ing of the process. Mr. Chesnut, in his treatise al- ready quoted on California Indian uses of plants, re- cords in detail how the transformation into edibility is accomplished : The Buckeyes are placed in the con- ventional stone-lined baking pit which has been first made hot with a fire ; they are then covered over with earth and allowed to steam for several hours, until the nuts have acquired the consistency of boiled potatoes. They may then be either sliced, placed in a basket and soaked in running water for from two to five days (depending upon the thinness of the slices), or mashed and rubbed up with w^ater into a paste (the thin skin being incidentally sepa- rated by this process) and after^vards soaked from one to ten hours in a sand filter, the water as it drains away conveying with it the noxious principle. It was customary to eat the resultant mass cold and without salt. I have encountered no record of the similar use of the eastern Buckeye. The Cali- f ornians' treatment of the Pacific Coast species is an interesting instance, I think, of what may be done with the most unpromising material.

82

CHAPTER V

SOME LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

AND BERRIES

Great e store of foiTest frute which hee

Had for his food late gathered from the tree.

The Faerie Queene.

NO one has to be told of the edibility of our wild strawberries, huckleberries, currants, cranber- ries, mulberries, raspberries, blackberries, elderber- ries, grapes and persimmons; nor of the pleasure which some palates find in the bitterish tang that goes with the familiar wild plums and cherries, al- though the only use to which most housewives con- sider these last fitted is the manufacture of jams and jellies. It is more to the purpose, therefore, in this chapter to touch upon some less known fniits of the hedge and heath — using the word fruit in its limited popular sense as based on succulency, rather than with botanical accuracy.

Throughout the basin of the upper IMissouri and from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, the Buffalo-

83

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

berry (Shepherdia argentea, Nutt.) is at home. In the journals of travelers in the upper plains two or three generations ago, no bush is more often men-

BUFFALO-BERRY

(Shepherdia argentea)

tioned than this. By the French voyageurs and en- gages it was called graisse de hoeuf, that is, ''beef fat, ' ' which seems in harmony with the story I have read that the name Buffalo-berry is derived from the

84

LITTLE REGAllDED WILD FRUITS

fact that it was a customaiy garnish to the monot- onous buffalo steaks and tongue of those early days. The plant is a somewhat spiny shrub or small tree with silvery, scurfy leaves, and forms at times ex- tensive and all but impenetrable thickets. The species is dioecious, and only the pistillate plant bears fruit; but that does it abundantly — tight clusters of small, scarlet berries, so sour as to find few takers until the frosts of October temper their acerbity. Then they are pleasant enough whether raw or cooked, though still with a touch of acid astringency that makes for sprightliness. Jelly made from them ranks especially high, and to this end they are gathered by white dwellers in the re- gions where they grow. In fact, the plant is not in- frequently found transferred to gardens. The ber- ries used to be one of the Indians' dietary staples, lending a lively, fruity flavor to the unending stews and mushes of the red men. There is a related plant, the Silverberry (Elaeagnus arrjentca, Pursh), native to much the same region and often cultivated in gardens for the sake of the fragrant, silvery, funnel-form flowers and attractive foUage. Its white, scurfy berries, while in a sense edible, are too dry and mealy for most peoiDle, and are left to the prairie chickens.

85

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

The Nightshade family, to which we owe the tomato, the potato and the egg-phmt (as well as the tobacco and some very poisonous fruits), is rep- resented in our wild flora by a number of plants bearing edible fiTiit. Of these the red berries of two shrubs of the deserts and semi-deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah resemble tiny tomatoes and go among the Spanish-speaking popu- lation under the name of iomatillo, that is, '^ little tomato." They may be eaten raw, if perfectly ripe, or boiled and consumed either as a separate dish or used to enliven stews and soups. Dried, they look like currants and may be stored away for winter use. Botanically the plants are Lycium pallidum, Miers, and L. Andersonii, Gray. They are more or less spiny shrubs, with small, pale, narrowish leaves, bunched in the axils of the branchlets, and bearing funnel-form greenish or whitish flowers — those of L. pallidum nearly an inch long; of L. Andersonii much smaller. To the Navajo Indians, the berries of the former have a sacred significance and Doctor Matthews states that in his day they were used in sacrificial offerings to a Navajo demi-god. Similarly among the Zufiis the plant is sacred to one of their priestly fraternities, and treated with reverence as an intercessor with the gods of the harvest. When

86

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

the berries appear, certain individual plants are sprinkled with sacred meal and this business-like prayer proffered: ''My father, I give you prayer meal; I want many peaches." ^

To the same family belongs the genus Physalis, some, perhaps most, species of which yield fruits that may be eaten. They are distinguished by a bladdery calyx which loosely envelops the small, tomato-like berry. These plants are known to Americans as Ground Cherries, and to the Spanish- speaking residents of our Southwest as tomates del campoy that is, ''wild tomatoes." Of the score or so of species indigenous to the United States, Pliysalis viscosa, Pursh, is one of the best known — a hairy, sticky perennial, common in fields east of the Mis- sissippi from Ontario to the Gulf. The nodding, greenish-yellow flowers have a purplish-brown cen- ter; and the yellow fruit is reported on excellent au- thority to be the best. A species producing red fruit (P. longifolia, Nutt.), found wild from Nebraska to Texas and westward to Arizona, has been thought worthy of cultivation by the Zuni Indians, who used to grow it, and perhaps still do, in the women's quaint little gardens on the slope of the river Zuni —

1 Stevenson. "Ethnobotany of the Zuiii Indians." 30th Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethnolofrv'-

87

Tomato del Campo (Physalis longifoliaj

88

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

gardens familiar to every observant visitor at this famous old pueblo. A favorite method of using the berries, according to Stevenson,^ was to boil them and crush them in a mortar with raw onions, chili and coriander seeds. Among the wiiites, the Ground Cherries, when used at all, are made into pre- serves.

In the Rose sisterhood — a familv that has c'iven us a wealth of garden fruits — are a number of wild- ings of more or less food value. Next to the wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, none per- haps stands higher in pojDular favor than the Amelanchier, in popular parlance Service-berry, June-berry, Shad-bush or Sugar-pear.-^ It is found with specific variations in leaf and fruit on both our seaboards, as well as in the Middle West, a small tree or shrub mth rather roundish, serrated leaves, and producing in late spring or early sunnner loose clusters of round or sometimes pea-shaped, crimson or dark-purple berries. These are juicy, with a pleasant taste not unlike huckleberries. To white settlers throughout the continent this berry has

2 "Ethnobotany of the Zufii Indians."

3 Service-hcrry, a name transferred from an English species of Pyriis, whose fruit was known as serh, scnc or service; June- herry, because the fruit generally ripens in June; Shad-bush, be- cause blooming when the shad are running in Eastern rivers.

89

90

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

always been an abundant wild stand-by for fruit pies. Old time Indians used it not only fresh but dried for winter consumption. Lewis and Clarke's journal mentions a berry that is undoubtedly this, which the Lidians were observed j)reserving by pounding masses together into ''loaves" of ten to fifteen pounds weight. These w^ould keep sweet throughout the season and would be used as needed by breaking off pieces to be soaked in water and dropped into stew^s. Strong competitors with man for the berries are the birds and the bears.

Another western berry that has appealed strongly to Lidian tastes but not, so far as I know, to ours, is the fruit of a species of Buckthorn {BJiamnus crocea, Nutt.). Doubtless there is nutrition in the berries, but they possess, according to Dr. Edward Palmer, the peculiar faculty of temporarily tinge- ing red the body of one wlio consumes them in quantity. He tells a gruesome story of accompan}'- ing as surgeon a troop of United States soldiers in pursuit of a band of twenty-two Apache Indians in Arizona, who were eventually surprised in their camp and killed outright. The bodies of all were discovered to be beautifullv reticulated in red from the juice of the Rliamnus berries on wliich the Indians had been gorging, the color having been

91

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

taken up hy the blood and diffused through the vsniallost veins.

Our American Hawthorns (botanically, Crataegus^ a L-enus which some modern botanists have split up into a lioi)eless multitude of confused species) bear clusters of tiny, alluring apples in various colors — yrllow, ])ur])le, scarlet, dull red, some almost black. Many of these are admirable for jelly making. Among the best are the large haws of Crataegus mollis (T. k G.) Scheele, about an inch in diameter and of a bright scarlet color. The species is fairly common throughout the eastern United States and Uontral West. The Summer Haw {Crataegus flava, Ait.), a small tree of the Southern States, bears somewliat pear-shaped, yellowish fruits, one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter, w^hich are also esteemed for jellies, as are the shining blackish ber- ries of the Black ITaw {Crataegus Douglasii, Lindl.), common in the Pacific Northwest, and sweet and juicy enough to be pleasant eating uncooked. In fact, when it comes to providing raw material for the jelly makers, almost any thicket in late summer will yield something, for even the hips of the Wild Rose have been turned advantageously to that use. The hips of certain species, that is; those being pre- ferred whose content is juiciest and fleshiest — as, for

92

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

instance, the plump berries of the beautiful Xutka Rose of the Far Northwest. Frost is an essential

American Hawthorn (Crataegus mollis)

agent in arousing palatability in most sorts of rose

fruits.

93

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Oil the Pacific Slope one of the cherished berries for jelly making is the Manzanita {Arctostaphylos of several species), a remarkable evergreen shrub, or sometimes a small tree, whose shiny, chocolate- colored trunk and twisting branches, as hard as bone, are familiar to every traveler in the California mountains. The popular name is Spanish for ''little a])i)U'," and aptly describes the appearance of the fruit. This is borne very abundantly and is ripe in mid-summer. The mountain folk, describing the plant, will tell you there are two kinds, one with smooth berries and the other with sticky ones: but ])otanists are not so easily satisfied, and have described at least a dozen species. The one most often used for jelly is Arctostaphylos Manzanita, Parry, common in mountainous regions throughout the length of California, and also, I believe, in parts of Arizona and Utah. The berries are smooth skinned, with an agreeable acid flavor, and mitritious, but dry, mealy and seedy. Chewed as one travels, they are a capital thirst preventive, but the pulp should be very sparingly swallowed, as it is quite hard to digest. Indians, in former days, however, set great store by them as an article of diet, and in specific Manzanita tracts, just as in the oak-groves, there were recognized tribal or family

94

Maxzaxita (Arctostaphylos ManzanitaJ

95

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

rights. The berries were consumed either dried and trround into pinole, or cooked as a mush, or in the fresh state. Death from intestinal stoppage is said to liave sometimes resulted, however, from too free indulgence in the uncooked fruit."* A favorite aboriginal use, too, was in the manufacture of cider, which will be described in the chapter on Beverage Plants.

To wliite cooks the Manzanita is of negligible in- terest except, as already hinted, as a basis for a jelly, which is famously good. The following recipe I have from ^Ir. Edmund C. Jaeger of Riverside, (California: Select berries, by preference of the smooth-skinned variety, which are more juicy than tlie others, picking them when full grown but still green, say about the first of June. Put them in a boiler with cold water to cover; and after bringing them to a boil, let them simmer until thoroughly cooked through: then pour into a cheese-cloth sack and press out the juice. This will have a cloudy look. Add sugar in the proportion of pound for pound, and boil till the liquid jells. The sugar clari- fies the juice, and the jelly is a beautiful, clear, amber red. Should the berries be too ripe, there will be

* Chesnut. "Plants Used by the Indians of Mendocino Co., Cali- fornia."

96

LITTLE REGARDED WILD ERUITS

failure to jell, but an excellent table syruj) is the re- sult, instead.

AVild currants, gooseberries, plums and cherries all play into the jelly maker's hands; and so do the acid, scarlet berries of the eastern Barlx*rry (Ber- heris CmiadensiSj Pursh), found in mountain woods

Oregon Grape (Berheris aquifoliumj

from Virginia to Georgia, as well as of the European Barberry {B. vulgaris, L.) which has become a wild plant in some sections. On the Pacific slope another Barberry is the familiar Oregon Grape [Berheris aquifolitmi, Pursh), a shrub two to six feet high, with evergreen pinnate leaves of seven to nine

97

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

loathorv, hollv-liko leaflets, ahundant in rich woods among rocks, especially in northern California and Oregon, of which latter State it is the floral emblem. Erect clusters of small but conspicuous yellow

Oregon Grape (Berheris aquifolium)

flowers adorn the bushes in the spring, succeeded in autumn by blue berries of a pleasant flavor which are useful for jelly making and also as the basis of a refreshing drink. Cousin to the Barberry is the

98

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

familiar May Apple, Wild Lemon or American ^fan- drake {PodnplnjUum pelt alum, L.), a common herb, with umbrella-like leaves sheeting the gromid in rich

May Apple (Podophyllum pel tat urn)

woodlands and shady meadows throughout the region east of the Alississippi from Canada to the Gulf. The pear-shaped fruit, about the size of a butternut, has claims to edibility. When green it exhales a

99

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

rank, rather repulsive odor, but when fully matured, all that is changed into an agreeable fragrance, hard to define — a sort of composite of cantaloupe, summer ajiples and fox grapes. Brought indoors, two or three will soon perfume a wliole room. As to palatability, tastes differ: some people loathe the flavor; others are fond of it. It ought not to be con- dennied on the evidence of unripe specimens, but should be tested fully mature, at which stage the little *' apples" are yellowish in color and drop into the hand at a touch. They may be eaten raw in moderation, the outer rind being first removed, or they may be converted into jell}^ Care should be exercised with respect to the leaves and the root, which are drastic and poisonous.

Occurring throughout the same range with the May Apple, but much less common east of the Alleghenies, is a small tree affecting stream borders and producing in early spring odd, solitary, purplish flowers pendulous from the leaf axils at the same time with the opening leaves. It is the North American Papaw {Asimina triloba, Dunal). In Sep- tember or October it bears sparse bunches of oblong, greenish, pulpy fruits each four or five inches in length and an inch or two in diameter, known as pai)aws, wild bananas, or, by old time French set-

100

LITTLE REGARDED WILD ERLTTS

tiers, asimines — a Gallicized form of the Assiniboine Indian name of the fruits. They are unquestionably of some food value, though again tastes differ on the point of their palatability. *' Edible for boys'^ is the classing they get from one good authority; but, on the other hand, the sweet, aromatic flavor is distinctly pleasant to some maturer palates. Perhaps, as I have heard it suggested, the divergence in views may be due in some degree to the fact of different natural varieties within the species. Our Papaw is a far- strayed member of the tropical family that includes the Anonas — the cherimoya, the sour-sop and the custard apples. Another plant tribe of the tropics that finds a small representation in the United States is the Passion Flower familv, noted for its remarkable blossoms in which the devout have thought to see a perfect symbol of the Divine Pas- sion. There is one species, commonly called Maypo}) (Passiflora incarnata, L.), so frequent along fence rows and in cultivated fields of the Southern States as to be in the class of a weed. The fruit is a vol- low, egg-shaped berry, a couple of inches long, ac- counted edible, but more esteemed when made into jelly than when eaten raw. Nevertheless to some tastes the flavor is agreeable. I fancy it is to this plant that John Muir refers in his "Thousand Mile

101

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

TTalk to the Gulf," quoting for it a local Georgia name, ''Apricot vine," having a superb flower ''and the most delicious fruit I have ever eaten."

The TTeatli family, Avliich gives us the huckleberry, ])hu'l)erry and cranberry (too well known to be treated here), as well as the manzanita already de- scribed, has two or three other members growing wild and bearing berries whose edibility is touched with a special grace of spiciness. One of these is the familiar Teaberry, Checkerberry or Wintergreen {GaidtJieria procumhens, L.), an aromatic, creeping, evergreen vine usually of coniferous w^oods, from subarctic America southward through the eastern United States to Georgia. The crimson-coated ber- ries, about the size of peas, are pleasant morsels and make a welcome feature in a small way in the autumnal displays of fruit venders in Eastern cities. A Pacific Coast species of Gaultheria with black- purple berries {G. Shallon, Pursh) has become com- monly known b}^ the name of Salal, a corrupted form of its Indian designation. It is a small shrub, one to three feet high, with sticky, hairy stems, frequent in the redwood forests of Xorthern California, and thence northward in shady woods as far as British Columbia. Lewis and Clarke's journal contains several references to the Oregon Indians' fondness

102

Salal (Gcuultheria Shallon)

103

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

for the berries, which, under the names of Shallon and Shewel, seem to have been a staple of diet with them. Th()ui;li thick of skin they are well flavored. Paradoxical enough, it is the desert that grows some of our most important and most juicy wild fruits. Among these the plump pods of species of ^'ucca or Spanish Dagger, abundant throughout the arid regions of the Southwest, are of recognized worth. One of the most widely distributed is Yucca I)arcafa, Torr., called by the Mexican population PahniUa ancha or Ddtil — the former name mean- ing ''broad-leaved little date-palm," and the latter, "the date fruit." The fruit is succulent, plump, and in shape like a short banana, and is borne in large, upright clusters, seedy but nutritious. The taste is agreeably sweet when fulh^ developed, which is in the autumn if birds and bugs spare the pods so long. Indians have always regarded the Ddtil as a luxury. As I write there comes vividly to mind a chilly, mid- August morning in the Arizona plateau country, when two Navajo shepherdesses left their straggling flock to share in the warmth of our camp fire and pass the time of day. As they squatted by the flame, I noticed that one slipped some objects from her blanket into the hot ashes, but with such deft

104

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

secretiveness that my eyes failed to detect what they were. Later as the woman rose to go, she raked awav the ashes wdth a stick and drew out several blackened Yucca pods, which had been roasting while we talked. I can testify to the entire palatal)ility of this cooked fruit (the rind being first removed), finding it pleasantly suggestive of sweet potato. Those fruits that morning were still green when plucked. Dr. H. H. Rusby informs me that the sliced pulp of the nearly ripe j^ods makes a pie almost in- distinguishable from apple pie. The ripe fruit may be eaten raw, but the more usual custom among the Pueblo Lidians, who would travel long miles in the pre-education days to gather the succulent, yellow pods and bring them home by the burro-load, was to cook them. Sometimes they were simply boiled, and on cooking the skin was removed, since it then sep- arates easily from the pulp; but there w^as a more complicated process, resulting in a sort of conserve, that was considered better. This w^as to bake the fruit, peel it and remove the fibre, and then boil down the pulp to a firm paste. This was rolled out in sheets of about an inch in thickness, and carefully dried. Afterwards these were cut up into con- venient sizes and laid away to be consumed either

105

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

as a sweetmeat, or dissolved in water as a beverage, or employed like molasses on tortillas and bread.^ The voims: flower buds of this and some- other species of Yucca possess a considerable content of sugar and other nutritive principles, and by the aborigines are considered delicacies ^vhen cooked. Coville records a custom of the Panamint Indians wlio collected the swelling buds of the grotesque arborescent Yucca of the Mojave Desert kno\\m as the Joshua tree {Yucca hrevifolia, Engelm.) and roasted them over hot coals, eating them afterwards either hot or cold.

The Yuccas have been useful to the desert people in other ways than as food, and we shall hear of them again in subsequent chapters. It is not re- markable, therefore, that the plant is imbued with sacred siignificance and enters in many w^ays into na- tive religious ceremonies. Among the Navajos, Yucca haccata is called hoskawn and allusions to it are of frequent occurrence in the folk lore of that interesting race. Its leaves are the material out of which the ceremonial masks employed in the relig- ious rites of these people are made. The Govern- ment has given particular distinction to this plant

5 Bandelier, quoted by Harrington in "Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians," Bull. 55, Bur. Amer. Ethnology.

106

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

by bestowing its Spanish name on tlio " Datil Na- tional Forest" of New Mexico.

The Cactus family, those especial plant children of the desert, yield some quite choice fruits, though they make us work to get them, hedged al)out as they are with vicious spines and bristles. Of several genera indigenous to the ITnited States producing edible berries, the most widely distributed is Opuntia, embracing tw^o quite diif erent looking divi- sions, one with broad, flattened joints (the Platopun- tias) and one wdth cylindric, cane-like joints (the Cylindropimtias) . Tlie former division includes the well-known Prickly Pears or Indian Figs, of which two species {Optmiia vulgaris^ Mill., and 0. Rafi- nesquii, Engelm.) occur in sandy or sterile soil of the Atlantic seaboard. Their seedy, lean, insipid berries, each an inch or so long, are edible in a way, but they are not at all in th^ same class with the fat, juicy ^' pears" of many of the species growing wild in the Southwestern desert country, where the genus is best represented. Even there, there is great choice in the fruits of different species, those of the broad-jointed sort being much the best. Such plants are called nopal by the Spanish-speaking Southw^esterners and the fruit tuna. Among these Opuntia laevis, Coult., and the varieties of 0. Engel-

107

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

majuii and 0. Liudlieimeri (the last abundant in Sontliom Calif ornia) are especially valued. Better than these, however, are certain species introduced a century or more ago by the Franciscan Mis- sionaries from Mexico, the motherland of the cacti. Tliese are Opuuiia Tinia, Mill., and 0. Ficus-Indica, ^lilL, and they now grow wild in many parts of Cal- ifornia, especially about the old Mission towms, the fruit being annually harvested by the Mexican pop- ulation. (See illustration facing page 18.)

The gatherer of tunas is faced by two difficulties — the rigid, needle-like spines that bristle on all sides of the plant, and tlie small tufts of tiny spicules that stud the fruit itself. The latter are really the more dangerous, because a touch transfers them from the tuna to the picker ^s flesh, there to stick and prick wickedly. If they happen to get into the mouth or upon the tongue, the pain is persistent and agonizing. With care, however, nothing of that sort need happen. Armed with a fork and a sharp knife, you spear your tuna firmly with the fork, give it a wrench and complete the parting from the stem by a slash of the knife. The next step is to peel the ''pear,'' wliich is made up of a pulpy, seedy heart enveloped in an inedible rind. This may be readily got rid of in the following way: Handling the tuna with a

108

Gathering tunas, fruit of the nopal cactus, CaHfornia.

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

glove or speared upon a fork, lay it upon a clean board, and holding it down slice off each end ; then make a longitudinal cut through the rind from end to end; lay open both flaps of the rind, which may then be pressed back, separating along natural lines from the pulp. If the gathered fruit is first placed in water and stirred well, the spicules are to a con- siderable extent washed off. (See illustration, page 174.)

Eaten raw, tunas of the better sort are refresh- ing and agreeable to most people, though the bony seeds are an annoyance unless one swallows them whole, after the Mexican fashion. The taste differs somewhat with the species, those that I have eaten possessing a flavor suggesting watermelon. The sugar content is considerable, and a very good synip may be obtained by boiling the peeled fruits until soft enough to strain out the seeds; after wdiich the juice may be boiled down further. No sugar need be added, unless a very sweet syrup is needed. Care should be exercised to select fruit that is really ripe ; in some sorts maturitv is slow to follow coloration. After all, though, it is Mexico where tuna raising and consumption have become an art, and the tuna market is an interesting feature in many Mexican to^\Tis. During the time of the harvest whole

109

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

families go to the hills and camp out in the Nopalcros (the areas where the cactus grows) and live prac- tically upon tunas alone. Mr. David Griffiths, in his monograph ''The Tuna as a Food for Man," '' states that at such times about two hundred tunas a day constitute the ration of one individual. Large (plant ities are dried for future use and several pro- ducts are also manufactured from the fresh fruit. One of these, called qiteso cle tuna (that is, "tuna cheese"), is an article of sale in the Mexican quarters of our Southwestern to\\ms. It is made by reducing the seeded tuna pulps to an evaporated paste, and is sent to market in the shape of small cheeses, dark red or almost black.

Another member of the Cactus family that is an important food source in the Southwest is the Sahuaro {Cereiis giganteus, Engelm.). It is Arizona's floral emblem, and abounds throughout the southwestern part of that State and across the frontier into northern Mexico, forming at times in the desert strange, thin forests casting attenuated shafts of shade. It is one of the world's botanical marvels, a leafless tree with fluted, columnar trunk and scanty, vertical branches, rising sometimes to

cBull. IIG Bur. Plant Industry, U. S. Dept. Agriculture.

110

LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

the height of sixty feet and tipped in spring witli numerous creamy, x)ink flowers. The fruit com- monly g'oes by its Mexican name, pitahaya. It ripens in June and Juh^, and somewhat resembles the tuna in form, with a juicy, seedy, crimson })ul]). To civilized tastes, the fresh fruit is rather mawkish, less sweet than that of the related pitahaya dnlcr^ which is common on the Mexican side of the border and is borne by Cereus Thurheri, Engelm. Never- theless the Arizona pitahaya is of considerable food value and highly relished by the Indians of the region, particularly the older generation of Papagos, who make a festival of the opening of the pitahaya harvest, dating their new year from that event, and used to intoxicate themselves as a religious duty upon a sort of wine that they made for the occasion from the fermented first fruits.

The i)itahayas are gathered with a twenty-foot pole, made of the rod-like ribs of some dead sahuaro lashed together and having a hook alhxed to the tip, with which the fruit is dislodged. Such part of the crop as is not consumed raw is boiled down, as in the case of the tuna, the seeds removed, and then boiled again until the mass is reduced to a syrup. This is of a clear, light brown color, and pleasantly sweet,

111

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

makin<i^ a fair substitute for molasses and corre- spondingly good on bread or corn cakes. It is set away for winter consumption.' The inner part of the i)itahaya may also be sun-dried, and will then keep for a long time. Sahuaro seeds are quite oily, and I am told by Mr. E. H. Davis that the Papagos dry them and grind them into an oleaginous paste, which they spread like butter on their tortillas. The ribs of this most useful plant are also employed by these same Lidians as the basis of their stick-and- mud houses — a practice doubtless inherited from the ancients, as in many old cliff dwellings sahuaro ribs are found reinforcing adobe.

A word about one more desert fruit, and this chapter closes. On the Colorado Desert of South- eastern California, there is indigenous a stately palm knowm as the California Fan Palm {Washingtonia filifera, Wendl., var. rohusta), which has been widely introduced into cultivation in the Southwest. In the canons of the San Jacinto Mountains opening to the desert and in the desert foothills of the San Bernar- dino ^lountains, as w^ell as here and there in certain alkaline oases of the desert itself, extensive groves of this noble palm flourish — the remnant, it is

T For an interesting and detailed account of the Arizona Sahuaro harvest and uses, see Mr. Carl Lumholtz's "New Trails in Mexico."

112

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LITTLE REGARDED WILD FRUITS

believed, of far greater forests tliat x)rol)a])ly existed in that region in primeval times. The mature fruit of the Washingtonia is l)erry-like and black, resem- bling a small grape or cherry, and is borne in huge compound clusters, which hang below the leafy crown of the tree in autumn and early winter. The relatively large seed is embedded in a thin pulp of sweetish flavor, which is edible, though it requires industry and a long pole to reach the fruit. These requisites were possessed by the old-time desert Lidians, who used to make of the palm-berries an important feature in their diet, not only consuming the pulp both fresh and dried, but also grinding the seeds into a meal, which Dr. Edward Palmer thouglit as good as cocoanut.

113

CHAPTER VI

WILD PLANTS WITH EDIBLE STEMS AND

LEAVES

I often gathered wholesome herbs, which I boiled, or eat as salads with my bread.

Gulliver's Travels,

WHAT would you say to a dish of ferns on toast? It is quite feasible in the spring, if the Common Bracken (Pteris aquilina, L.) grows in your neighborhood — that coarse, weedy-look- ing fern with long, cord-like creeping root-stocks and great, triangular fronds topping stalks one to two feet high or more, frequent in dry, open woods and in old fields throughout the United States — the most abundant of ferns. The part to be used for this purpose is the upper portion of the young shoot, cut at the period when the fern shoot has recently ])ut up and is beginning to uncurl. The lower part of the shoot, which is woody, and the leafy tip, which is unpleasantly hairy, are rejected. It is the inter- mediate portion that is chosen, and though this is

114

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

loosely invested with hairs, these are easily brushed off. Then the cuttin.ij:, which resembles an at- tenuated asparagus stalk, is ready for the pot. Divided into short lengths and cooked in salted, boil- ing water until quite tender — a process that usually requires a half to three quarters of an hour — the fern may be served like asparagus, as a straight vegeta- ble, or on toast with drawn butter, or as a salad with French dressing. The cooked fern has a taste quite its own, with a sugges- tion of almond. Its food value, according to some experiments made a few years ago by the Washington State Uni- versity, is reckoned as about that of cabbage, and rather more than either asparagus or tomatoes. Furthermore, the rootstocks of this fern are edible, according to Indian standards, and are doubtless of some nutritive worth as they arc starchy, l)ut the

115

Brackkn Shoots (Pteris aquilina)

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

flavor does not readily commend itself to cultivated I^alates.

Dietitians who insist on the value of salads as part of a riulillv balanced ration have a stron^2^ backer in Mother Nature, if we may take as a hint the large nunilier of wild plants which everywhere freely offer themselves to us as ^'greens'' — all wholesomely edible and many of decided palatability. Especially in the spring, when the human system is starving for green things and succulent, the earth teems with these tender wilding shoots that our ancestors set more or less store b}^ but which in these days of cheap and abundant garden lettuce and spinach we leave to the rabbits. To know such plants in the first stages of their growth, wdien neither flower nor fruitage is present to assist in identification — the stage at which most of them must be picked to serve as salads or pot herbs — presupposes an all-round acquaintance with them, so that the collector must needs be a bit of an exjDert in his line, or have a friend who is.

There is one, however, that is familiar to every- body— the ubi(iuitous Dandelion, whose young plants are utilized as pot-herbs particularly by immigrants from over sea as yet too little Americanized to have lost their thrifty Old World ways. It is a pleasant

116

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

sight of spring days to see these new-fledged Ameri- cans dotting tlie fields and waste lots near our big cities, armed with knives, snipping and transferring to sack or basket the tender new leaves of the well- beloved plant, which, like themselves, is a translated European. The leaves are best when boiled in two waters to remove the bitterness resident in them; and then, served like spinach or beet-tops, they are good enough for any table. Old Peter Kalm, who has ever an eye watchful for the uses to which people put the wild plants, tells us the French Canadians in his day did not use the leaves of the Dandelion, but the roots, digging these in the spring, cutting them and preparing them as a bitter salad.

Then there is Chicory, Avhich has run wild in settled parts of the eastern United States and to some extent on the Pacific coast, adorning the road- sides in summer with its charming blue flowers of half a day. Its young leaves, if prepared in the same way as those of the Dandelion, are relished by some. Preferably, though, the leaves are blanched and eaten raw as a salad. The blanching may be done in several ways. The outer leaves may be drawTi up and tied so as to protect the inner foliage from the light and thus whiten it, or flower-pots may be capped over the plants. Another method is this:

117

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

Chicory

(Cichorium IntyhusJ

Dig up the roots in the aTitumn, cut back the tops to within an inch of the root-crown and bury the roots to within an inch of the top in a bed of loose mellow earth in a warm cellar. In a month or tw^o,

118

EDIBLE STEMS AM) LEAVES

new leaves should appear, crisp and white and ready for the salad bowl.

Another old-fashioned pot-herb that may be gathered freely in the spring is the early growtli of that familiar weed of gardens and waste places throughout the land, the homely Pigweed (CJioio- imdium album, L.), or Lamb's quarters. This latter queer name, by the way, like the plant itself, is a waif from England, and according to Prior ^ is a corruption of *^ Lammas quarter,'' an ancient festival in the English calendar with which a kindred plant {Atriplcx patida), of identical popular name and usage, had some association. Of equal or per- haps greater vogue are the young spring shoots of the Pokeweed {Pliytolacca decandra, L.) boiled in two waters (and in the second with a bit of fat pork) and served with a dash of vinegar. So, too, the tirst, tender sprouts of the common eastern ^I ilk- weed {Asclepias Syriaca, L.) have garnished country tables in the spring as a cooked vegetable, but the older stems are too acrid and milky for use. Mr. J. M. Bates, writing in ''The American Botanist," speaks of this and of the closely related species, A. speciosa, Torr., of the region west of the ^Fississippi, as the best of all wild greens, providod tln^y are

1 "On the Popular Names of British Plants," R. C. A. Prior, M. D.

119

Milkweed (Asclepias ^yriacaj

120

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

picked while young enough, that is, like asparagus sprouts and while the stems will still snap when bent. Young leaves and all are good in that stage of growth.

The Buckwheat faniilv, which has yielded to civili- zation not only the grain that bears the family name but also the succulent vegetable Khubarb, has some wild members with modest pretensions to useful- ness. That common weed, naturalized from Europe, the Curled Dock {Riimex crispus, L.), for instance, is of this tribe ; and its spring suit of radical leaves stands well with bucolic connoisseurs in greens. An- other Eumex {R. liymenosepalus, Torr.), common on the dry plains and deserts of the Southwest and be- coming very showy when its ample panicles of dull crimson flowers and seed-vessels are set, is famous there as a satisfactory substitute for rhubarb, which, indeed, the plant somewhat resembles. The large leaves, nearly a foot long, are narrowed to a thick, fleshy footstalk, which is crisp, juicy and tart. These stalks, stripped off before the toughness of age has come upon them, and cooked like rhubarb, are hardly distinguishable from it. AVesterners know it as Wild Rhubarb, Wild Pie Plant, and Canaigre. Under the last name it has some celebrity as tanning material, the tuberous roots being rich

121

Wild Rhubarb (Rumex hynienosepalus)

122

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

in tannin and having be4?n long used by the Indians in treating skins. The tannin is extracted by leach- ing the dried and ground roots.

To the same family belongs the vast western genus Eriogonum, which includes that famous honey plant of tire Pacific coast known as Wild Buckwheat. Some members of this genus are prized by the Indians and children for the refreshing aciditv of the young stems — a quality of distinct value in the arid regions where many of them grow and where one is ''a long way from a lemon." Among such is Eriogonum infatum, T. & F., the so-called *^ Desert Trumpet" or "Pickles," found abundantly on the southwestern desert as far north as Utah and eas-tward to New Mexico. It is remarkable for its bluish-green, leafless stalks, hollow and puffed out like a trumpet, sometimes to the diameter of an inch or so, and rising out of a radical cluster of small heart-shaped leaves. The stems before flowering are tender and are eaten raw.

The peppery, anti-scorbutic juices of the Mu-stard family supply a valuable element in the human dietary everywhere ; and besides the important vege- tables and condiments that represent it in our gardens — such as cabbage, turnips, radishes, horse- radish, etc. — there are several species growing wild

123

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

that have been proved of worth. Water-cress, known to everybody {Nasturtium officinale, K. Br.) and originally introduced, at least in the East, from Europe, is now a common aquatic throughout a large I)art of the United States and Canada. The waters of springs and brooks are often found thickly blanketed with green coverlets of this plant dotted with the tiny white flowers, and lending spice to the wayfarer's luncheon. Winter Cress, Yellow Rocket, or Barbara's Cress {Barharea vulgaris, R. Br.) used to be very generally eaten by people of humble gastronomic aspirations, so that it has acquired the additional name of Poor Man's Cabbage, being pre- I)ared either as a pot-herb or as a salad. It is abundant by roadsides and in low-lying fi'elds quite across the continent, and, in fact, almost around the world, and was no doubt cultivated in our colonial gardens. Even in winter, when the snow melts enough to show bare patches of earth, the tufted, thickish leaves of this sturdy mustard are frequently revealed, green and alive, hugging the ground. The lower leaves are of the shape that botanists call lyrate — that is, long and deeply lobed, with one to four pairs of segments and a terminal one large and roundish. In early spring it sends up a spike of showy, yellow, four-petaled flowers. Quite similar

124

Winter Cress (Barbarca vulgaris)

125

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

to this, and bv some botanists considered onlv a variety of it, is the Scurvy Grass (Barbarea praecox, li. i)r.), with leaf divisions more numerous than those of the Winter Cress. It, also, is used as a winter salad. It must have been very grateful to systems suffering from the unvaried ration of salt meat that too often distinguished the winter tables of our rural ancestors.

In the same class are two large cruciferous plants of the arid regions of the Far West, that go by the name of Wild Cabbage among the whites who know them. Their tender stems and leaves have a cab- bage-like taste and have at times gone into the pioneer's cooking pots. One is Stanley a pinnatifiday Nutt., found in dry, even desert soil, from South Dakota to New Mexico and w^estward to California, a stout, smooth perennial, two to four feet tall, with low^er leaves divided into slender segments and with long racemes of yellow, four-petaled flowers, suc- ceeded by slender seed-vessels downwardly curved on long foot-stalks. The other is Caulanthus crassi- caulis (Torr.), Wats., found on dry foothills of the interior basin from the Sierra Nevada to Utah. It, too, is a stout, smooth perennial, two to three feet high, but with hollow, inflated stems, leaves mostly radical and in shape somewhat like a dandelion's,

126

EDIBLE STEMS AND LKA\ ES

and dark-purple flowers each with four crisped, wavy petals little larger than the woolly calyx. The youn.c: plants, while still tender, are edihle hut need to he cooked. The process pursued hy the Pananiint Indians is thus described by Coville : ''The leaves and young stems are gathered and thrown into boil- ing water for a few minutes, then taken out, washed in cold water, and squeezed. The operation of washing is repeated five or six times, and the leaves are finally dried, ready to be used as boiled cal)l)age. Washing removes the bitter taste and certain sub- stances that would be likely to produc-e nausea or diarrhoea. ' '

One would suppose that the stinging Xettle (Urtica dioica., L.) would be as unlikely a subject as one could readily find to supply a morsel where- with to tickle the palate. Nevertheless, this "nat- uralized nuisance," as good old Doctor Darling- ton of "Flora Cestrica" fame testily styles it, has long been valued as a vegetable in Europe, whence the plant has come to us. There the tender shoots, cut before the flowering stage, were served in old times on the tables of the well-to-do as well as of the peasantry. On a day in February, 1G()1, Mr. Samuel Pepys, of inmiortal memory, ingenuously set down hi his diary the fact that calling upon one

127

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

^fr. Simons in London, he found the gentleman abroad, ''but she, like a good lady, within, and there we did eat some nettle porridge, which was made on purpose to-day for some of their coming, and was very good." Was it not Goldsmith who wrote that a French cook of the olden time could make seven different dishes out of a nettle-top I

Along our Southwestern border from Texas to California and southward into Mexico a species of Amaranth grows (Amarmithus Pahncri, Wats.), known to the Mexicans and Indians as quelite (a general name among the Mexican population, I believe, for greens) or more specifically as hledo. The latter word is good Spanish for ''blite," an Old AVorld pot-herb. Quelite is highly regarded when young and tender as a vegetable for men, and, when cut and stacked, as a winter feed for cattle. It is a stout, weedy annual, two to four feet high, the ovate leaves one to four inches long on footstalks about twice that length, the greenish flowers of two sexes (on different plants) disposed in long, dense chaffy spikes. Only the young plants should be gathered ; they should then be boiled without delay, and the result, in the judgment of white people who know it, is a dish resembling asparagus in flavor, and rather superior to spinach. Mexicans and Indians have

128

EDIBLE STEMS xVNI) LEAVES

used it extensively. Other species of Amaranths have been similarly turned to account.

This little course in wild pot-herbs may now be closed with mention of three members of the Portu- laca family. These plants are marked by smooth, succulent, thickish leaves, and though humble herbs, they are usually found, when found at all, in sufficient abundance to be very noticeable. Most familiar is the little prostrate plant common everywhere in fields and w^aste places, called Purslane {Portidaca oleracea, L.). It is generally regarded by Ameri- cans as a weed and provokes the temper by its stub- born persistence in turning up after it has appar- ently been eradicated. It has, however, held quite a respectable social position abroad, where garden- ers have cultivated it and developed it as a whole- some vegetable useful not only as a pot-herb but for salads and pickles.' On the Pacific slope a cousin of the Purslane, known as Miner's or Indian Lettuce {Montia perfoliata, Howell), is abundant in shady places. It is easily recognized by clustered, h)ng- stalked, fleshy root-leaves, rhomboidal in outline, from among which a flower stalk rises to the height of several inches. This is terminated by a raceme of tiny white flowers beneath which a pair of oppo-

'Eaten raw it is a valuable anti-scorbutic.

129

Miner's Lettuce (Montia perfoliataj

130

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

site leaves united at their bases forms a cup or saucer around the stem, a diagnostic feature of the ph\nt. The Indians were very fond of the pleasant succulence of the stem and leaves and their consuni])- tion of the herb led the wliite pioneers to try it. It makes, indeed, a palatable enough dish, either raw with a sprinkling of salad dressing or boiled and served like spinach. Stephen Powers tells of a certain tribe of California Indians who were accus- tomed to lay the leaves near the nests of red ants, which running over the greens would flavor them with a formic acidity that served in lieu of vinegar ! ^ The value of this little wilding is attested by its intro- duction into English kitchen gardens, where, under the name of Winter Purslane, it is esteemed as a pot-herb and a salad plant.

Also of California is another of the Portulaca kin- ship, the pretty wild flower known as Red Maids or Kisses {Calandrinia caulescens Menziesii, Gray), whose crimson blossoms expanding in the sunshine make sheets of vivid color over considerable areas in the spring. The plant is an annual with juicy stem and leaves, and may be used like those others of its family just mentioned as a garnish to a meal.

If, as we have seen, the Nettle may ])e made to

3 "Contributions to North American Ethnology." vol. ill. 42.").

1:31

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

grace the table, it is quite credible that within the spiny armor of the Cactus tribe nutrition may be 1 lid i lit?. As a matter of fact, in the Southwest the ^lexical! and Lidian population resort to the Nopal (that is, the flat-jointed sort of Opiintia) not only for the tuna fruit, as described in a previous chapter, but also for the succulent flesh of the stem, which may be made to do duty as a vegetable. The Mexi- cans call these flattened joints yencas, and gather the young ones when about half groAvn and before the si)ines have hardened. Cut into narrow strips, boiled until tender and served with a tasty dressing or just salt and pepper, they are about in the class of string beans, particularly grateful to desert dwell- ers whose craving for green food it is not always easy to satisfy. There is a bluish-green, procumbent cactus without spines {Opuntia hasilaris, Engelm.) common in the southwestern deserts, that has been in particular favor with the Indians, and the Pana- mint method of preparing it, as recorded by Mr. Coville,^ may be stated here : In May or early June the fleshy joints of the season's growth, as well as the buds, blossoms and immature fruit, are distended with sweet sap. The joints are then broken off and collected, carefully rubbed with grass to remove the

■* The American Anthropologist, October, 1892.

132

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

tiny bristles, and spread in the sun to dry. After being thoroughly dried, they will keep indefinitely, and are boiled as required and eaten with a season- ing of salt. An alternative process is to steam the joints for about twelve hours in stone-lined pits first made hot by a fire of brush. The cactus, .thus cooked, may be eaten at once or dried and laid away for future use. It then has the texture and appear- ance of unpeeled dried peaches.

From the curious, cylindrical, keg-like bodies of another cactus of the Soutlnvest {E chin oc act us sp.), termed hisnaga by the Mexicans, or Barrel Cactus by polite Americans (others sometimes style it Nigger-head), a sort of conserve used to be made by the Papago Indians of Arizona — the prototype of the so-called *' Cactus Candy" of city shops. The process, as described by Dr. Edward Palmer, w^as to pare away the thorny rind of a large specimen and let it remain several davs ^^to bleed." Then the pulp was cut up into pieces of suitable size and boiled in the syrup of the Sahuaro pifahayas, obtained as described in the preceding chapter. Another and more important use of this cactus will be described later.

Few plants of the Southwestern desert region are more interesting and useful than the .Vgave, a genus

133

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

of the Amaryllis family. Its general aspects are made familiar through the well-known Century Plant of cultivation. There are a dozen species or more indigenous within the limits of the United States, ranging mostly along the Mexican border fi'om Texas to California. For years — ten to twenty, it may be — the plant devotes itself exclu- sively to developing a rosette of slender, pulpy, dagger-pointed leaves, stiff and fibrous. Then some spring day, within the center of this savage leaf- cradle, a conical bud is born and develops quickly, a foot a day it may be, into a huge, asparagus-like stalk, twelve or fifteen feet tall, that breaks out at the summit into clusters of yellow blossoms. This long delayed consummation costs the plant its life, and with the maturing of its seeds it turns brown and withers away. It is from a Mexican species of Agave that the Mexicans manufacture their desolat- ing drinks pulque and mescal. The United States species, however, have been little turned to such account, but as a nutritive food source they have from very ancient times been important to the Indians. This food shares with the fiery Mexican drink the name mescal. Even at the present day, when the ease of extracting a meal from a tin can has been the cause of relegating many an honest

134

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

old-time cookery to oblivion, there are Indians who pack up every spring and repair to the mescal fields, there to ojDcn again the ancient 1)aking j)its wliich their fathers and their fathers before them liad used, and camp for a week at a time, cutting and cooking, feasting and singing, and telling once more the im- memorial legends of their race.

The process of preparing mescal as I happen to have observed it in California is this: The succu- lent, budding flower-stalks when just emerging from amid the leaves are cut out with an axe, or better yet with a native implement fashioned for the purpose — a long, stout lever of hard wood (oak or mountain mahogany) beveled at one end like a chisel. They are then trimmed of their tips and all adhering leaf- age, the desirable portion being the butt, which is filled with all the pent-up energy that the plant was holding in reserve for tlie supreme act of flower and seed production. Meantime, a circular pit, al)out a foot and a half deep and five or six feet in diameter, has been prepared — usually one that has been used in previous years being dug out. This is lined side and bottom with flat stones, and a huge fire of dry brush started in it, care being taken to use no wood that is bitter. When the fire has l)urned down, the mescal butts are placed in the hot ashes, covered

135

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

over with more hot ashes and heated stones from the sides of the pit, and all is then buried beneath a mound of earth. There the mescal is left to steam until some time the next day, like the four-and- twenty blackbirds of the nursery rhyme in their pie. When the pit is opened the mescal, still hot and now charred on the outside, is dra\\m out, the burnt exterior pared off, and the brown, sticky inside laid bare, to be eaten on the spot or laid away to cool and be transported home for future use. If the buds have been cut young enough, mescal is tender and sweet, the flavor suggesting a cross between pine- apple and banana and pleasant to most white palates. Indians are extravagantly fond of it, and it is rare indeed that the stock carried home lasts over the following summer. Should the buds be too old when cooked, the result is unpleasantly fibrous, though in such cases one need only chew until the edible part is consumed, when the fibre may be spat out. Mr. Coville, in his account of the Panamints above quoted, speaks of finding at some forsaken Indian camps along the Colorado Kiver, dried and weathered wads of chewed mescal fibre — visible re- minders of forgotten feasts.

Denizens of the same region with the Agaves, and

136

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EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

somewhat resembling them, are several species of Dasylirion, but the leaves, which form a crown upon a central stem, are much narrower and the small flowers are white and constructed on the plan of the lily. They are called, in popular parlance, Bear- grass, from Bruin's fondness for the tender stalks, or more generally by their Mexican name, Sotol. The budding flower-stalks are to some extent used like mescal — roasted" and eaten. So, too, the ])eauti- ful Yucca Whipplei, Torr., abundant throughout Southern California and adjacent regions, has been made to add variety to the aboriginal menu. The splendid flower masses of this plant, several feet in length and rising in pure white spires out of a bristling clump of slender, rigid, spine-tipped leaves, are a famous sight in parts of the Southwest. Americans call this Yucca ''Spanish Bayonet," or sometimes more poetically ''The Lord's Candle." To Mexicans it is quiote, one of the many Aztec terms that survive with little mutilation in the Spanish dialect of the Southwest. The flower-stalk, when full grown but before the buds expand, is filled with sap and is edible, cut into sections and either boiled or roasted in the ashes. The tough rind should first be peeled off. The flower buds, too,

137

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

make a palatable vegetable, if boiled, and serve as a succulent side-dish to the camper's usually monotonous drv diet.

On the Southeastern rim of our countrv from

ft-'

North Carolina to Florida, a common tree is the Cab- bage Palmetto (Sahal Palmetto, R. & S.), which South Carolina has adopted as so peculiarly her own that she is known as the Palmetto State. It is a palm of much the general look of the California Fan Palm, though it never attains so great a height as the latter often does. All palms grow by the de- velopment of a central, terminal leaf-bud, and this in some species — the Palmetto is one — is turned to ac- count as an edible, being popularly known as a "cabbage." When cooked, the Palmetto cabbage is a tender, succulent vegetable, though the harvest- ing of the buds is a wasteful practice, unless it is desired to clear the land, as cutting them out kills the trees.

We have it on the authority of Holy Writ that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, foregathered for a season with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen, finding it, it is to be assumed, a sustain- ing ration. The Lidians of California, curiously enough, long ago acquired and maintained more per- sistently than the royal Babylonian a similar habit

138

EDIBLE STEMS AND LEAVES

of turning tliomselves out to pasture, to feast upon llie patches of wild clover. This they ate raw and with greedy avidit}', before the flowering stage, while the plants were still young and tender. In fact, clover was another of tlie aboriginal food plants esteemed as so important as to be lionored with especial dance ceremonies. Chesnut speaks of see- ing groups of Indians in Mendocino Count}^, Cali- fornia, wallowing in the ^\ild clover, plucking the herbage and eating it by the handful. Its nutritive content is unquestioned, if only one have the diges- tive organs to handle it, chemical analysis of the leaves showing the presence of food elements in good degree. Intemperate indulgence, however, is liable to cause bloat and severe indigestion. The Indians, to obviate this, learned that dipping the leaves in salted water, or munching with them the parched kernels of the Pepper-nut (the fruit of the California Laurel, Umhellularia Calif ornica) is efficacious.^ Not all species of clover are considered equally good. The favorite, still to quote Chesnut, is the so-called "sweet clover" {TrifoJium viresceus, Greene), distinguished by stout, succulent stems, ovate leaflets, large, inflated yellow and pink flowers,

^j v. K. Chesnut, "Plants Used by the Indians of Mondooino Co., California."

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USEFUL WILD PLANTS

and a noticeable sweetness of taste. Of this species even the flowers are eaten. Next to this in flavor is the ''sour" or "salt clover" {T. ohtusiflorum, Hook.), with narrow, saw-toothed leaflets, whitish blossoms with purple centers, and a clammy, acid- ulous exudation -that covers the leaves and flowers. I had thought to close this chapter here, when a correspondent who is a veteran camper. Dr. Robert T. Morris, of New York, reminds me of certain other plants which he has found so useful that I add them. The Spotted Touch-me-not or Jewel-weed {Irnpa- tiens fulva, Nutt.) he has depended upon for weeks at a time in the northeastern wilderness, where, under the name of Lamb's-quarters, it is commonly regarded as an important vegetable food. It luxu- riates beside shady rills, and its orange-colored spotted flowers, followed by fat pods that burst at a touch, are familiar to all. Excellent, too, in early spring, are the latent buds of the Cinnamon and Interrupted Ferns {Osmmidas), rivals of the chest- nut in flavor and size. Then those leathery lichens common on rocks and known as Rock -tripe {Umhili- caria), so often included in the menus of old-time hunters and voyageurs, have value. "They make," to quote Dr. Morris, "an excellent pottage, although the addition of a little bacon or deer meat or wild onion improves the flavor very mucli."

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CHAPTER VII BEVERAGE PLANTS OF FIELD AND WOOD

And sip with nymphs their elemental tea.

Pope.

MAN dearly loves a sup of drink with his meat, and when our pioneer ancestors in the Ameri- can wilderness ran short of tea and coffee and craved a change from cold water, they found material for m*ore or less acceptable substitutes in numerous wild plants. Particularly during the American Revolu- tion was interest awakened in these, and several popular i3lant-names still current date from those days of privation. Again during our Civil War the attention of residents in the South was similarlv drawn to the wild offerings of nature. A literary curiosity, now rare, of those dark days may still be turned up in libraries, a book entitled ''Resources of Southern Fields and Forests . . . with practical information on the useful properties of the Trees, Plants and Shrubs," by Francis Peyre Porcher, Charleston, S. C, 1863, the writer being then a surgeon in the Confederate Army.

141

USEFUL WILD TLANTS

Among such beverage plants one of the best known is a little shrub, two or three feet high, frequent in drv woodlands and thickets of the eastern half of the continent from Canada to Texas and Florida, com- monly called New Jersey Tea, the Cemiothus Ameri- canus, L., of the botanists. It is characterized by pointed, ovate, toothed leaves, two or three inches long, strongly 3-nerved, and by a large, dark red root, astringent and capable of yielding a red dye. This last feature has given rise to. another name for the plant in some localities — Red Root. In late spring and early summer the bushes are noticeable from the presence of abundant, feathery clusters of tiny, white, long-clawed flow^ers which, if examined closelv, are seen to resemble minute hoods or bonnets extended at arm's length. The leaves contain a small proportion of a bitter alkaloid called ceano- thine, and were long ago found to make a passable substitute for Chinese tea. During the Revolutionary War an infusion of the dried leaves as a beverage was in common use, both because of the odium at- tached to real tea after the taxation troubles with England, and from motives of necessity. Connois- seurs claim that the leaves should be dried in the shade. There are a score or more of species of Ceanotlius indigenous to the Pacific coast, w^iere

H2

."-•?;':, f^^^-

New Jersey Tea (Ceano t hus A mcrica n us)

143

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

they arc known as ^' myrtle'^ or ^Svild lilac^^; but I have not heard of their leaves being used like those of the eastern species mentioned. These plants will be referred to again in the chapter on Vege- table Soaps.

Another of the Revolutionarv War substitutes was the foliage of the so-called Labrador Tea {Ledum Grooilaudiciim, Oeder), a low evergreen shrub of cold bogs throughout Canada and the northeastern United States as far south as Pennsvlvania. A dis- tinguishing feature is in the narrow, leathery leaves with margins rolled back and a coating of rusty wool on the under side. When pinched the foliage ex- hales a slight fragrance.

The familiar Sassafras of rich woods, old fields and fencerows on the Atlantic side of the country at- tracted attention very early in colonial days, and all sorts of virtues as a remedial agent were ascribed to it. During the Civil War, Sassafras tea became a common substitute for the Chinese article, and as a spring drink for purifying the system it still has a hold on the popular affection. The root is the part generally utilized, an infusion of the bark being made which is aromatic and stimulant. The flowers also may be similarlv treated.

Of the same family with the Sassafras and of

144

BEVERAGE PLxVNTS

much the same distribution is the common Spice- wood, Wild Allspice, or Feverbush^ {Lindcra Ben- zoin^ Blume), a shrubby denizen of damp woods and moist grounds, easily recognized in early spring by the little bunches of honey-yellow flowers that stud the branches before the leaves appear. The whole bush is spicily fragrant, and a decoction of the twigs makes another pleasant substitute for tea, at one time particularly in vogue in the South. Dr. Porcher states that during the Civil War soldiers from the upper country in South Carolina serving in the company of which he was surgeon, came into camp fully supplied ^\dth Spicewood for making this fragrant, aromatic beverage. Andre Michaux, a French botanist who traveled afoot and horse-back through much of the eastern United States \vhen it was still a wilderness, half starving by day and sleeping on a deer-skin at night, has left in his jour- nal the following record of the virtues of Spicewood tea, served him at a pioneer's cabin: ^'I had supped the previous evening [February D, 171)(J] on tea made from the shrub called Spicewood. A handful of young twigs or branches is set to boil and

1 Also called Benjamin-bush, corrupted from ben/.oin, an aromatic gum of the Orient which, however, is derived from quite another family of plants. French-Canadians used to call the Spicewoml. poivrier, w'hich means pepper plant.

145

Spicksvood (Lindera Benzoin)

146

BEVERAGE PLANTS

after it has boiled at least a quarter of an liour, sugar is added and it is drunk like tea. ... 1 was told milk makes it much more agreeable to the taste. This beverage restores strength, and it had tliat effect, for I was verv tired when I arrived." Tlie scarlet berries that cling like beads to the branches in the autumn used to be dried and powdered for use as a household spice, whence, obviously, the name Wild Allspice sometimes given to the slirul).

The warm, birchy flavor of the creeping Winter- green {Gaidtheria procumhens, L., the use of whose berries was noted in the previous chapter) could hardly have failed to attract attention to the plant as a likely substitute for Chinese tea when the latter was unobtainable; and one of its popular names, Teaberry, indicates that that is what happened — an infusion of the leaves being made. A pleasant and wholesome drink may also be made from the foliage of one of the Goldenrods — Solidago odora, Ait. This is a slender, low-growing species with one- sided panicles of flowers, not uncommon in dry or sandv soil from New Emj:land to Texas a.nd cHs- tinguished by an anise-like fragrance given off by the minutely dotted leaves when bruised. A com- mon name for it is Mountain Tea, and in some parts of the country the gathering of the leaves to dry ainl

147

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

peddle in the winter has formed a minor rural in- dustry, yielding a modest revenue.

The devotees of coffee, too, have found in the wilderness places substitutes for their cheering cup. One of these is the seed of the Kentucky Coffee-tre\3" {Gymnodadus Canadensis, Lam.), a picturesque forest tree with double-compound leaves occurring from Canada to Oklahoma. In winter it is conspicu- ous because of the peculiar clubby bluntness of the bare branches, due to the absence of small twigs and branchlets, which gives to the whole tree a lifeless sort of look that gained for it among the French settlers the name Chicot y a stump. In the autumn the female trees (the species is dioecious) are seen hanging with brown, sickle-like pods six to eight inches long and an inch or two wide, and containing in the midst of a sweetish pulp several hard, flatfish seeds. If we are to judge from the popular name it was probably the pioneers in Kentucky that first had an inspiration to roast these seeds and grind them for beverage purposes. The fact is, however, that a century ago such use of them was quite preva- lent in what was then the western wilderness, and travelers' diaries of the time make frequent mention of the practice. The journal, for instance, of Major

148

BEVERAGE PLANTS

Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-20 records that while in winter camp on the Missouri River near Council Bkiffs, the party substituted these seeds for coffee and found the beverage both palatable and wholesome. Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, who botanized the following year around the mouth of the Ohio River, testifies to tlie agree- ableness of the parched seeds as an ai'ticle of diet, but thought that as a substitute for coffee they were '^greatly inferior to cichorium."

Cichorium is the botanists' way of saying Chicory, the plant that has been referred to already as pro- ducing leaves useful as a salad. Its root has had a rather bad name as an adulterant of coffee, in which delusive form it has perhaps entered more human stomachs than the human mind is aware of. As a drink in itself, sailing under its own colors. Chicory is not a bad drink, the root being first roasted and ground. It is rather surprising, by the way, to learn that a palatable beverage is possible from steeping the needles .of the Hemlock tree {Tsuga Canadensis, Carr.) — which is not to be confused with the poisonous herb that Socrates died of. Hemlock tea is, or at least used to be, a favorite drink of the eastern lumbermen, and I have myself drunk it

149

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

with a certain relish. Similarly the leaves of the magnificent Douglas Spruce {Pseudotsuga taxifolia, Dritt.) of the Pacific coast produce by infusion a beverage which many Lidians and some whites have esteemed as a substitute for coffee.

The Mint family, well advertised by the pro- nounced and usually agreeable fragrances given off ])y its members, has been utilized as a source less of ordinary beverages than of medicinal teas, ad- ministered in fevers and digestive troubles. Such plants of the former sort as have come to my notice are all western. One of these has, in fact, played both roles. This is the aromatic little vine known in California as Yerba Buena (the botanist's Micro- mer'ia Douglasii, Benth.), found in half shaded woods and damp ravines of the Coast Ranges from British Columbia to the neighborhood of Los An- geles. Its dried leaves steeped for a few minutes in hot water make a palatable beverage mildly stimulating to the digestion, and, like real tea, even provocative of gossip; for it is an historic little plant, this Yerba Buena, which gave name to the ^lexican village out of which the city of San Fran- cisco afterwards rose. Tlie two words, which mean literally ''good herb," are merely the Spanish for our term ''garden mint," of whose qualities the

150

Ykrba Br en a (Micromeria Douglasii)

151

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

wild plant somoAvliat partakes.^ Of the Mint tribe, also, is the herb Chia, about whose edible seeds something- has been said. At the present day, Chia is better known as a drink than as a food. A tea- spoonful of the seeds steeped in a tumbler of cold water for a few minutes communicates a mucilagin- ous quality to the liquid. This may be drunk plain, but among the Mexicans, who are very fond of it as a refreshment, the customary mode of ser\^ing it is with the addition of a little sugar and a dash of lemon juice. The tiny seeds, which swim about in the mixture, should be swallowed also, and add nutrition to the beverage. A Spanish-California lady of the old school gave me my first glass of Chia, and recommended it as ^'mejor que ice-cream' ' (bet- ter than ice cream).

Of quite a different sort, but equally refreshing and easy to decoct, is the woodland drink called *' Indian lemonade," made from the crimson, berry- like fruits of certain species of Sumac. East of the Rockies there are three species abundant, dis-

1 The mint of the gardens {Mentha viridis and, to a less extent, .1/. piperita) is a common escape in damp ground and by streamsides throughout tlie country. In the Southwest the leaves, under the name of Verba Buena, are used in the same way as those of Micro- meria. A steaming hot infusion of mint leaves is a bracing beverage higlily esteemed ))y tired, wet vaqueros coming in at evening from their day's work on the range.

152

Sumac (Rhus glabra)

153

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

tinguished by compact, terminal, cone-like panicles of ^vllite (lowers and pinnate leaves that turn all glorious in the autumn in tones of orange and red. They are BJiiis typhuia, L. (Staghorn Sumac), R. (jhihra, L. (Smooth Sumac), and R. copallina, L. (Dwarf Sumac). The first is sometimes a small tree; the others are shrubs. In the Eocky Moun- tain region and westward RJius trilohata, Nutt., is frequent — the Squaw-bush, as it is called, because the branches are extensively used by the Indian women in basketry; and on the Pacific coast, Rhus ovata, AVats., and R. integrifolia, B. & H., stout shrubs or small trees, occur. The last two have leathery, entire leaves quite unlike those of the eastern species, and the white or pinkish flowers are borne in tight little clusters. The berries of all these sumacs are crimson and clothed with a hairy stickiness that is pleasantly acid and communicates a lemon-like taste to w^ater in w^hich the fruit has been soaked for a few minutes. These plants — par- ticuhirly the western species — are often found grow- ing on hot, waterless hillsides, and their fruits offer a grateful refreshment to the thirsty traveler, whether sucked in the mouth until bared of their acid coating, or steeped in w^ater to serve as a w^oodland lemonade. The three far western species are com-

154

Si

^t/r

LE^rONADE-BERRY

( I\h us intrgrifolia )

155

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

monly known as Lomonade-berry, and R. integri- folla is also sometimes called ''mahogany" because of its hard wood, dark red at the heart. The Spanish people call it mangla, a name they give to some other sumacs as well.

The berries of the Manzanita, a Pacific coast shrub that was described in an earlier chapter, make an exceptionally agreeable cider. This is one of the harmless beverages of Indian invention, and I can- not, perhaps, do better than to quote the method that Chesnut describes in his treatise on the "Plants Used bv the Indians of Mendocino Co., California." Ripe berries, carefully selected to exclude any that are worm-eaten, are scalded for a few minutes or until the seeds are soft, and then crushed with a potato masher. To a quart of this pulp an equal quantity of water is added, and the mass is then poured over a layer of dry pine needles or straw placed in a shallow sieve basket and allowed to drain into a vessel beneath; or sometimes the mass is allowed to stand an hour or so before straining. AVhen cool, the cider, which is both spicy and acid, is ready for use without the addition of sugar. A better quality of cider is said to result if the pulp alone is used. The dried berries, in the latter case, are pounded to a coarse powder, and then by clever

156

BEVERAGE PLANTS

manipulation and tossing in a flat basket — a process at which the Indian woman is an adept — the heavier bits of seed are made to roll off while the fine par- ticles of pulp chng to the basket.

The desert, too, has its beverage plants. There, if anywhere, pure water takes its place as tlie most luxurious of drinks, and the sands bear at least one group of plants from Avhicli good water may be obtained, namely, the Barrel Cactuses {Echinocac- fus) of the Southwest, of which something has been said under another head. The juices of most cacti, while often plentiful, are as often bitter to nauseous- ness; but those of the Barrel Cactus — or at least of certain species — are quite drinkable, and the rotund, keg-like plants serve a very important purpose as reservoirs of soft water. This is readily obtainable by horizontally slicing off the top and pounding up the succulent, melon-like pulp with a hatcliet or piece of blunt, hard wood that is not bitter. In this wav the watery content is released and may be dipped out with a cup. In the case of some species, I ])elieve, the juice is too much imx)regnated witli mineral substances to be drinkable; but in others — as Echino- cactus Wislizeniy Engelm., E. Enwri/i, Engelm., and E. cylindraceus, Engelm. — the fluid obtained is clear and pleasant to the taste, quenching the thirst satis-

157

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

factorily. An odd and all but forgotten use of these vegetable water barrels of the desert is their former employment by Indians as cooking vessels. The fleshy interior was scooped out and the shell treated as a pot, into which water (secured by the mashing up of the pulp) was poured, heated with hot stones and these withdrawn as they cooled and replaced with hotter. Meantime the meat and other edibles were dropped in and allowed to simmer until done. Upon breaking camp, the cook abandoned her im- promptu kettle, depending upon tinding material for a new one at the next stopping place.

Throughout the arid and semi-desert regions of the Southwest from New Mexico to Southern California, a peculiar plant called Ephedra by the botanists is abundant. There are several recogTiized species but all have so strong a family resemblance that in popular parlance they are lumped as one and spoken of as Desert Tea or Teamster's Tea. Thev are shrubby plants, two or three feet high, greenish- yellow and distinguished by slim, C3dindrical, many- jointed stems and abundant opposite branches, the leaves reduced to mere scales. The clustered flow- ers, inconspicuous and borne in the axils of the branches, are of two sorts on different plants, the pistillate producing solitary, black seeds of intense

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bitterness. Tlu' plant is well stocked with tannin, and an infusion of the branches — green or di'icd — in boiling water has long been in favor with the desert people, red and white. Desert Tea was lirst adopted by the white explorers and frontiersmen as a me- dicinal drink, supposed to act as a blood purifier and to be especially efficacious in the lirst stages of venereal diseases; but its use at meals as an ordinary hot beverage in substitution for tea or coffee is by no means uncommon, and cowbovs will sometimes tell you they prefer it to any other. The Spanish- speaking people call the plant CanidiWo, a word meaning little tube or pipe. Similarly used is the EnciniUa or Chaparral Tea {C rot on corymhidosus, Engelm.), a gray-leaved plant of the Euphorbia famil}^ found in w^estern Texas and adjacent regi(ms. The flowering tops are the part employed, aiul an infusion of them is palatable to many. Dr. Ilavard, in an article on "The Drink Plants of the North American Indians,"^ stated that in his experience not only Mexicans and Indians enjoyed it, but that the colored United States soldiers of the southwest- ern frontier preferred it to coiTee. The phint con- tains certain volatile oils but apparently no stimu- lating principle. Thdespcrma, a Southwestern

2 Bulletin Torrey Botanical Cliil.. \ol. XXIII, Xo. 2.

151)

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

genus of herbaceous plants of the Composite family, somewhat resembling Coreopsis, with opposite, finely dissected, strong-scented leaves and yellow flowers (sometimes without rays), furnishes a species or two used as substitutes for tea by the Mexican popuhition. Thelesperma longiioes, Gray, occur- ring from w^estern Texas to Arizona, is commonly known as Cota, and is said to give a red color to the water in which it is boiled.

'M\\q\\ more appealing to the average taste is a drink that Mexicans sometimes make from the oily kernels of the jojoba nut of Southern California and northern Mexico {Simmondsia Calif ornicaj described previously). Mr. Walter Nordhoff, formerly of Baja, California, informs me that the process fol- lowed is first to roast them and then treat them in the same way as the Spanish people prepare their chocolate. This, I believe, is to grind the kernels together with the yolk of hard boiled egg^ and boil the pasty mass in w^ater with the addition of sugar and milk. When they can afford it a pleasant flavor- ing is given by steeping a vanilla bean for a moment or two in the hot beverage. This makes a nourish- ing drink as well as a savory substitute for one's morning chocolate or coffee. A substitute for choco- late among the American population of some sec-

160

BEVERAGE PLANTS

tions of the United States is funiished In- tlio rcddish- l)rown, creei)iiig rootstock of the l^urph' or Water Avens {Geiim r'lvale, L.), a jjereiiiiial herb with coarse, pinnate basal leaves and 5-petaled, purplish, nodding flowers, borne on erect stems a c()ni)le of feet high. The plant is frequent in low ,2:!'()uii(ls mid sw^amps throughout much of tlie northern i)art of the United States and in Canada, as well as in Ku- rope and Asia. The rootstock is cliaracterized ])y a clove-like fragrance and a tonic, astringent prop- erty, and has been used by country people in decoction as a beverage, with milk and sugar, under the name of Indian Chocolate or Chocolate-root. It is the color, however, rather than the taste that has suggested the common name. Lucinda llaynes Lombard, writing in ^^The American Botanist" for November, 1918, mentions a curious popular super- stition to the effect that friends provided with Avens leaves are able to converse with one another though many miles apart and speaking in whispers!

Readers of literature concerning old time explora- tions in America will perhaps recall passages in the reports of various writers devoted to accounts of a beverage called Yaupon, Cassena, or the Black Drink, formerly in great vogue among the Indians of the Southern Atlantic States and colonies. One

161

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

of those ancient chroniclers who did so much to misinform Europe about the New World and its products, speaks of this Black Drink as a veritable elixir that would ^'wonderfully enliven and invie;- orate the heart with genuine, easie sweats and transpirations, preserving the mind free and serene, keeping the body brisk and lively, not for an hour or two, but for as many days, without other nourish- ment or subsistence. '^ (!) William Bartram, to whose account of the Indian uses of Southern plants something over a century ago reference was made in an earlier chapter, speaks of spending a night with an Indian chief in Florida, smoking tobacco and drinking Cassena from conch shells. Bartram does not seem to have liked his Cassena, and in point of fact few white people ever did; but the wide prevalence of its consumption among the Southern Indians, who once drove a brisk inter-tribal trade in the leaves, and the fact that the Cassena plant is nearly related to the famous. Paraguyan drink yerha mate' have created some latter-day interest in the Black Drink. The plant from which it is made is a species of spineless Holly or Ilex (7. vomit oria^ Ait.), frequent in low woods from Virginia to Florida and Texas. It is a shrub, or sometimes a modest tree, with small, evergreen leaves which are elliptic in

162

BEVERAGE PLANTS

shape and notched around the edge, and in autumn the branches are prettily stnchled witli rod borries about the size of peas. An analysis ol' Hr' dried

Cassena (Ilex vomitoria)

leaves reveals a small percentage (one-quarter of one per cent.) of caffeine, about half th(> (luantity of the same alkaloid that is contained in the leaves of

163

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

mate {Ilex Paragiiayensis). The leaves were cus- tomarily toasted, thoroughly boiled in water, and then cooled hy pouring rapidly from one vessel to another and back again, which also developed frothi- ness. The liquid is, as the name indicates, of a black color, and is quite bitter. Dr. E. M. Hale, who made a special study of the subject and had the results pubUshed by the United States Department of Agri- cuhure ^ a number of years ago, pronounced it a not un])leasant beverage, for which a liking might read- ily be acquired as for mate, tea or coffee — in fact somewhat suggesting in taste an inferior grade of black tea. AYhen very strong from long boiling, it will act as an emetic — a consummation lightly re- garded by the Indians, who merely drank again.

Two other species of Ilex growing wild throughout a greater part of the length of our Atlantic seaboard possess leaves that have been similarly used as sub- stitutes for Chinese tea. One is /. glabra, Gray, popularly known as Inkberry, a rather low-growing shrub of sandy soils near the coast, with shiny, wedge-shaped, evergreen leaves, and ink-black ber- ries; the other, 7. verticillata, Gray, a much taller shrub, with deciduous foliage, and bright red berries clustered around the stems and persisting in winter.

3 Bulletin 14, Division of Botany.

164

BEVERAGE PLANTS

The latter species is called in common speech IMack Alder or Winter-berry, and frequents swampy ground as far west as the ^lississippi.

The spicy, aromatic inner ])ark and younf^ twi^s of the Sweet or Cherry l>ireh (Brfida loita^ L.) also deserve mention, as the basis of that old-time domes- tic brew, birch beer. The characteristic flavor is due to an oil like that distilled from Wintergreen {Gaul- theria procumhens). This species of birch is a graceful forest tree with leaves and bark sui»-gesting a cherry, and is of frequent occurrence in rich wood- lands of the Atlantic seaboard States. The sap is sweet, like the Sugar Maple's, and may be similarly gathered and boiled down into a sugar. The nearly related River Birch {Betula nigra, L.), a denizen of low grounds and streamsides throughout much of the eastern United States, particularly southward, is a potential fountain in early spring when the sap is i-unning. At that season, if you stab the trunk with a knife, stick into the cut a splinter to act as a spout, then set a cup beneath to catch the drippings, you will have shortly a draught as clear and cool as spring water, with an added suggestion of sugar. The tree is distinguished by slender, drooping branches, which sleet storms in winter sometimes badly shatter and break. From such niitcndod

165

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

wounds, hundreds in number, the sap later on will drop pattering to the ground; and I have stepped from bright sunshine on a March day into the shadow of one of these trees and been sprinkled by tlie descending spray as by a shower of rain.

On re-reading this chapter I see I have overlooked two common wild plants whose possibilities for tea making are worth the camper's knowing. One is that charming little creeping vine with evergreen thyme-like leaves exhaling the fragrance of winter- green, Chiogenes liispidula, T. and G., the Creeping Snowberry, which delights in cool upland bogs of the northern Atlantic seaboard. The tiny white flowers, solitary in the axils of the leaves, are less showy than the white berries which give the plant its name. Readers of Thoreau will recall his brew- ing his best tea of it in the Maine woods. The other plant is a familiar Pacific Coast fern, Pellaea ornitliopus, Hook., the Bird's-foot ClitT-brake, found in dry ground nearly throughouit California, and easily identified by the division of the fronds into a series of stiff triple-pointed segments strikingly like the three spreading toes of a bird's foot. Tea made by steeping the dried fronds is both tasty and fragrant.

166

CHAPTER VIII VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOJl SOAP

To soothe and cleanse, not madden and pollute.

Wordsworth.

AMONG the pleasant pictures of my mental gal- lery is one of an autumn evening at a Puehlo Indian village in New Mexico, where I chanced to he a few years ago. The sun was near setting, seeking his nightly lodging in the home of his mother, who, according to the ancient Indian idea, lives in the hidden regions of the west; on the house-tops the corn huskers were gathering into baskets the nnilti- colored ears that represented the day's labor; along the trail from the well some laughing girls were filing, w^ith dripping jars of water on their heads; the village flocks, home from the plain, were crowd- ing bleating into corrals ; and from open doors came the steady hum of metates, the fragrance of grinding corn, and the shrill music of the women's mealing songs. Then up the street came i)attering a couple of burros loaded with fire-wood and driven by an

167

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

old Lidian man. Immediately three or four women appeared at house doors and called inquiringly ^'amolcV^ The old man halted his donkevs, lifted from one a sack, out of which he drew several pieces of thick, blackish root, which he distributed impar- tially among the women, and then proceeded on his way. The root, it transpired, was a sort of vegetable soap and answered to that strange word of the women, amole. This, in fact, is the name current throughout our Spanish Southwest for several com- mon wild plants indigenous to that region, and rich enough in saponin to furnish in their roots a natural and satisfactory substitute for commercial soap. Several are species of the familiar Yucca — in particular Y. haccata, Y. angiistifolia and Y. glauca. Americans who prefer their own names for things call them soap-root, when they do not say Spanish bayonet, or Adam's Thread-and-Xeedle or just Yucca. All three species mentioned have large, thick rootstocks firmly and deeply seated in the earth, so that a pick or crow-bar is needed to uproot them. Before the white traders introduced the sale of com- mercial soap, aynole was universally used by Mexi- cans and Indians for washing purposes, and the l^ractice is not yet obsolete by any means. The rootstock is broken up into convenient sizes and

168

\EGETABLE SUBSTITUTES EUll SOAP

washed free from any adhering dirt and grit. Then, when needed, a piece is mashed with a stone or hammer, dropped into a vessel containing water, cold or warm, and rubbed vigorously up and down until an abundant lather results — and this comes very quickh\ After dipping out the fibre and broken fragments, the suds are ready for use. They answer every purpose of soap, and are particularly agreeable in their effect upon the skin, leaving it soft and comfortable. A shampoo of amole is, among the long-haired Southwestern Indians, not only a luxury but a prescribed preliminary to cere- monies of the native religious systems. Even whites recognize the efficacy of the root, and an American manufacturer in the Middle "West has for years been making a toilet soap with the rootstock of Yucca haccata as a basis. It is put upon the market under the name of Amole Soap.

Certain species of Agave, that is, the Century Plant fraternity, are frequent along the Mexican border and contain saponin in greater or less quan- tity, affording a soap substitute as do the Yuccas. Best known, perhaps, is the species that Spanish- speaking residents call lechuguilla (botanically, Agave lechuguilla, Torn). This is distinguished by a cluster of radical, yellowish-green, spine-tipped,

169

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

fleshy leaves, few in number (rarely over fifteen) and barely a foot long, the flowers borne in a close panicle almost like a spike. The short trunk of the plant is, I believe, the part usually used for soap ; but Dr. J. X. Rose, in his ''Notes on Useful Plants of Mexico,'^ quotes Havard as authority for the state- ment that saponin is found in the leaves of this species. The rootstock of a related Texan species {A. varier/afa, Jacobi) is also soapy, and the paper by Dr. Rose just mentioned quotes a statement by a resident of Bro^\msville, Texas, to the effect that a piece of the rootstock of the latter species as big as a walnut, grated and mixed with a quart of warm water, will clean a whole suit of clothes. The most used Agave-amoles, however, are plants of Mexico, the discussion of which would not be perti- nent here.

Of wide occurrence in California is an amole of quite a different appearance. It is the bulbous root of a plant of the Lily family, by botanists fearfully and wonderfully called CMorogalum isomer idianum, Kunth. The average American simplifies this into California Soap-plant. Its first appearance is shortlv after the winter rains set in, and for several months all that one sees of it is a cluster of stemless, grass-like, crinkly leaves, lolling weakly on the

170

California Soap-pla'^t (Chloroga I u m po meridia n u m )

171

California Soap-plant (Chlorogalu m pomeridianum)

172

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR M)AP

ground. Late in the spring, a slender flower stalk puts up and at the height of four or five feet breaks into a widely spreading panicle of white, lily-like but small blossoms, that open a few at a time at evening, shine like stars through the night and wdther away the next morning. To tlie economist the most interesting part of the plant is su])ter- ranean. This is a bottle-shaped bulb, rather deep set in the ground, and thickly clad in a coat of coarse, bro^^Tl fibre. When this fibre is stripped off, a moist heart is disclosed an inch or two in diameter and about twice as long. Crush this, rub it up brisklv in w^ater, and a lather results as in the case of Yucca and quite as efficacious for cleansing. In- deed, the absence of alkali — an absence that is a characteristic of the amoles — makes the suds es- pecially valuable for washing delicate fabrics. Some users of this California amole prefer first to mb the crushed bulb directly upon the material to be washed, just as one w^ould do with a cake of soap, and then manipulate the article in the clear water. The lather is said to be also useful for removing dandruff. However that may be, it unquestionably makes an excellent shampoo and leaves the hair soft and glossy. The bulbs may be used either fresli or after having been kept dry for months. Our knowl-

173

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

edge of the cleansing property resident in this bulb is a gift from the California Indian, who, in spite of the popular notion to the contrarj^, has a taste — though not an extravagant taste — for cleanliness.

Another well-known California soap plant is a species of Pig-weed (Chenopodiiim Calif ornicum, AVats.), abundant throughout much of the State in arroyos and on moist hillsides. It is a stout, weedy- looking herb, with inconspicuous, greenish flowers in slender, terminal spikes, and toothed, triangular leaves turning yellow and dying as the dry season advances. The stout stems, a foot or two high, grow numerously from the crown of a very deep-seated, si3indle-shaped root which is at times a foot long and requires industrious digging to lift it from its earthv bed. While fresh it is rather brittle and readily crushed with a hammer, when, if agitated in water, it quickly communicates a soapy frothiness to the liquid, and is cleansing like the other suds noted. The roots may be laid away for use w4ien dry, in which state they are as hard almost as stone, and require to be grated or ground in a handmill before using. The saponaceous property in this root was also discovered first bv the Indians.^

1 The roots of the Southern Buckeve or Horsechestnut (Aescuhis Pavia, L.) are rich in saponin, and Dr. Porcher states that their

174

A Pacific Coast soap plant (Chloroi^aluiii ponwriduinion) . The bulb, stripped of its fibrous covering, is highly saponaceous. The fiber is useful for making coarse brushes and mattresses.

ouii.iimiilMi uWiipiWi I

_£.:s::

■^^BS«-»5i*»"». '

Tunas, fruit of a Southwestern cactus— Showing how it is opened to secure the meaty pulp. (See page 109.)

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP

The soap plants thus far luinied must, i'roni the nature of the case, suffer extcrmiiiMtioii in tlie fuliilling of their mission, ])ut there are others in- digenous to the United States that need not be killed to serve. First among these may be mentioned the genus CeanotJius, one species of which — the New Jersey Tea — has already claimed attention in the chapter on Beverage Plants. The genus comprises about thirty-five species, nearly all shrubs or small trees confined to the western United States and northern Mexico. They are particularly al)undant on the Pacific Coast, and are popularly known as *'wild lilac" and ^'myrtle" (one or two species as ^'buck brush"). They are frequently an important element in the chaparral cover of the mountain sides, and in the spring their fiowers create beautiful effects in such situations, forming unbroken sheets of white or blue, acres in extent. The fresh blossoms of many species — perhaps of most or even all — are saponaceous, and rubbed in water produce a cleans- ing lather that is a good substitute for toilet soap. Care must be exercised, however, to inck off any green footstalks that cling to the llowers, as these

suds are preferable to commercial soap for washing' and whiteninj? woolens, blankets and dyed cottons, the colors of which are improved by the process.

175

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

tend to give the suds a greenish tinge and a weedy smell. This floral soap is not only perfectly cleans- ing but leaves the skin soft and faintly fragrant. It is a poetic sort of ablution, this bathing with a handful of snowy blossoms plucked from a bush and a little water dipped out of the brook, and revives our faith in the Golden Age, when Nature's friendly outstretched hand was less lightly regarded than nowadays. Similiarly of use are the fresh, green seed-vessels, though these often have a resinous coating that is apt to cause a yellowish stain, if the rinsing is not perfect.

The cherished Balloon vine of our gardens does not include soapiness among its charms, but it can at least claim cousinship with some of the world's most famous soap plants — namely, certain species of the genus Sapindus, trees or shrubs native to the warmer regions of both hemispheres. The name Sapindus means ''soap of the Indies," where, as well as in China and Japan, several species have been drawn upon for detergent material from very early times, and are still in favor for washing the hair and deli- cate goods, such as silk. Within the limits of the United States, three species are indigenous: Sap- indus saponaria, L., abundant from Brazil to the West Indies, finds a lodgment on the extreme south-

176

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP

ern tip of Florida, and besides its soapy possibilities possesses seeds, hard and ])lack, that serve for beads and buttons; S. marginatus, AVilld., an evergreen tree sometimes sixty feet in height, occurs along our southern Atlantic seaboard from the Carolinas to Florida; S. Drummondii, IT. & A., ranges from Kansas to Louisiana and westward to Arizona, and is known to Americans as Soap-berry or Wild China tree,^ and to the Spanish-speaking people as jahon- cillo (little soap). All three species are trees with pinnate leaves (non-deciduous in the first two) and small, w^hite flowers borne in terminal panicles; and all produce fleshy berries about the size of cherries and containing one or two seeds. It is in these berries that the soapy property dwells, and this is readily communicated to water in which the berries are rubbed up. Li the case of S. Drummondii, the clusters of yellow berries (turning black as they dry) are a conspicuous feature of the bare winter branches, for it is their habit to persist on the trees until spring.

Also of the West is a species of gourd occurring in dry soil from Nebraska to Mexico and westward to the Pacific. In some sections it is known as

2 From its resemblance to the true China tree {Mrlia Azcdnrnch), extensively planted for ornament and shade in the Soutliern Stales.

177

Soap-berry (Sapindus marginatus)

178

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP

Missouri Gourd and in California as ^Inck Orange. Botanically it is Ciicurhifd forfidissima, TIIM\, and the rank, garlicky odor given off ])y the crushed leaves makes the specific appellation very apropos. It is a coarse, creeping vine with solitary, showy, vellow flowers and robust, triangular leaves that have a fashion of standing upright in liot wcatlier, like ears; and it spreads so industriously tliat at the summer's end its tip may be as nuich as twenty-five feet away from the starting point, which is tlie crown of a deep-seated, woody, perennial root shaped like a carrot. In the autumn the shriveling leaves reveal numerous, round, yellow gourds, which conspicu- ously dot the ground and are likely at first glance to deceive one into thinking them spilled oranges — a fact that accounts for one popular name. These gourds are pithy, but such pulp as they contain, as w^ell as in the roots, is saponaceous, and crushed in water both fruit and root yield a cleansing lather. It is, however, apt to leave the skin with a harsh feehng for a few moments, not altogether pleasant. There appears to be saponin in the vine also, since Doctor Edward Palmer has stated that in northern Mexico a Cucurbita, that is undoubtedly this species, has been extensively used by laundresses who mash up the vines with the gourds and add all to their

179

Missouri Goued (Cucurbita foetidissima)

180

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP

wash water. To wear uiulcr-clothes thus washed, one must be indifferent to the pricldes of the rou^^h hairs and broken fibre that are of necessity mingled with the water. Among tlie Spanish-speaking people of the Soutliwest, this gourd goes by the name Calahasilla. In old x>h^iits the root is some- times six feet long and five or six inches in diameter. This, descending perpendicularly into tlie earth, enables the plant to reach moisture in arid wastes where shallow-rooted plants would perish. The dried gourds, it may be added, may l)e very conven- iently used as darning-balls.

Probabh' the most widely known of all our Ameri- can soap plants — though not all who know the plant are aware that it bears soap in its gift — is an herb of the Pink familv that used to have a corner in many old-fashioned gardens under the name of Bouncing Bet (Saponaria ofpcinalis, L.). It is a smooth, buxom sort of plant with stems a foot or two tall and noticeably swollen at the joints, oval, ribbed leaves set opposite to each other in two's, and dense clusters of white or pink 5-petaled flowers. It is not a native-born American, but came hither from Europe early in the white immigration and has now become naturalized in many parts of the country near the settlements of men, where it is often so

181

USEFUL WILD PLANTS

common as to be classed as a weed. The juice of the roots is mucilaginous and soapy, producing a

BouxciNG Bet

(Saponaria officinalis)

lather when agitated in water, and the peasantry in some parts of Europe use it to-day for soap. By the brothers in European monasteries, centuries ago,

182

VEGETABLE SUBSTITUTES EOll SOAP

its virtue as a capital cleansing agent was well un- derstood, and they employed it for scouring clotli and removing stains. They gave it, in monkish fashion, a Latin name, licrhn fiiUinnon, which in English translation, Fuller's herl), is sometimes still assigned it in books; but in every-day speech the rustic English name, Soap wort, is more usual. Tn our Southern States a pretty local name that has come to my notice is ^*My Lady's Wash-bowl." It was in a Saponaria, I believe, that the glucoside saponin — the detergent principle of the soap i)lants — was first discovered and given its name. That was about a century ago, and since then chemists have identified the same substance existing in vary- ing degrees in several hundred species throughout the world.^ In most plants, however, the c|uantity is too small to make a serviceable lather.

3 N. Kruskal. "Soaps of tlie N'egetable Kingdom," in "The Pharmaceutical Era," Vol. XXXI, Xos. 13, 14.

183

CHAPTEE IX

SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS WOKTH

KNOWING

Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. Benvolio. For what, I pray thee? Romeo. For your broken shin.

Borneo and Juliet.

THE subject of medicinal plants is one that I approach with considerable reluctance; be- cause, though the employment of wild herbs as reme- dies has been a cherished practice with sick humanity whether savage or civilized from the earliest times, there exists still great diversity of opinion about the efficacy of particular simples. One has only to thumb over any ancient herbal or old botanical manual or the succeeding editions of pharmacopoeias to notice the decline and fall of one popular medicinal plant after another with the progress of the years, and so to become rather skeptical about the whole subject. Nevertheless, it is a poor chaff-pile that does not hold some kernels of pure grain; and this chapter, without professing to trench upon the prov-

184

SOME MEDICINAL WILDINGS

ince of the chemist who distils and extracts a multitude of medicines from the herbs of the licld, will call attention to a few of those plants growing wild whose reputation for the relief of some simple disorders appears well grounded. At any rate they are harmless.

Such medicinal wildings may be classed under two principal heads: those occurring also in Europe or Asia, or naturalized here from the Old World, their uses therefore being part of the white race's tra- ditional knowledge ; and those indigenous plants that found place in the medical practice of the Indians, from whom we have got a hint of their value.

In the former class one of the best known is Yarrow or Milfoil {Achillea Mi