Sassafras Night06:26 Apr 11 2008
Times Read: 1,669
I grew up with sassafras tea and my grandmother's homemade file' (You pronounce that "fee lay.") File' is the dried and coarsely crushed leaves of the sassafras tree used to make gumbo thicken up. She would crush the leaves and place them into a clean and dry jar. She would wrap the outside of the jar with aluminum foil so that the light would not hasten its breaking down to powder. We still have a jar on the shelf, though she has been dead many years now.
I just bought 2 sassafras saplings today to plant around my home. The scent of sassafras has reminded me for some time now of someone dear to me. It is the warm smell of tea, cold homemade root beer, and file' gumbo...the smell of woody bark and the earth. I need this tree around me to connect the old with the new. It will grow and shade my home, my children, and one day, my grandchildren, I hope.
I wondered about why this scent would remind me of a person I have never met. I researched the history of the tree and found some things that interested me. I doubt this will be a great read for most of you, but it's where I was tonight. Sources are cited:
In his biography of London, Peter Ackroyd describes the eighteenth-century drink saloop:
Saloop was a hot, sweet beverage made from a decoction of sassafras wood, milk, and sugar, and sold for three halfpence a bowl; the name is supposed to have been derived from the slopping sound of those drinking it in the street.
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The Biggest Sassafras
American Forests, May-June, 1994 by Whit Bronaugh
In 1603 the merchants of Bristol, England, sent two ships to the New World to fill their cargo holds with a treasure. This venture was not a risky hunt for gold or precious stones but rather a prudent investment in sassafras oil. Native Americans extracted the oil from the bark of sassafras roots to ward off evil and sickness.
Sassafras bark was one of the first exports of the Jamestown Colony. By the time the Bristol merchants marketed their shiploads of sassafras, the price had risen to 336 English pounds per ton, equivalent to $25,200 a ton today.
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The Singular Sassafras.
From: American Forests | Date: 3/1/1989 | Author: Clepper, Henry
Sassafras is the sole representative of its genus in North America.
The tree's most distinguishing characteristic is its leaves. On the same tree, three different leaf-forms may be found. The shape may be entire and somewhat elliptical, mitten-shaped with either right-or left-hand lobes, or three-lobed.
When chewed, the leaves and twigs become mucilaginous and promote salivation. This was helpful to me when I was fighting forest fires and water was scarce. If I could find a sassafras tree, I knew I could relieve my thirst by chewing its leaves.
As Donald Culross Peattie tells it in his informative, Natural History of Trees (1950), Nicholas Monardes compiled a treatise on the resources of the "New Founde Worlde." He reported that the Indians would gather sassafras roots that would cure the "sicke of any grief." Specifically, he claimed that it was a remedy for malaria and other fevers. Peattie's assumption is that the importance of sassafras to the aborigines was in its aromatic qualities. Its potent and agreeable odor was believed to be a defense against evil spirits, according to then-current superstition.
In Europe, the English as well as other nationalities were eager to accept the reputed claims for the Indian medicine. In 1603, a company was formed in Bristol to send two vessels to the New World, principally with the intention of bringing back cargoes of sassafras bark. Thus, sassafras was one of the first, if not first, forest product to be exported from what is now the mid-Atlantic states.
Captain John Smith, English colonist, sent sassafras to England as a medication in the early 1600s. But soon the bark was no longer credited with cures, although it was still used as a tonic to cleanse the system. Yet in America, it was known as the argue tree and was used to treat bronchitis, and kidney and respiratory ailments.
In his A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), John Lawson, surveyor-general of North Carolina, reported that the Indians esteemed most highly those plants considered to be curative. "Sassafras was a straight, neat, little tree . . . . treasured by the Indians for its aromatic roots, from which, when pounded, a potion could be brewed to refresh or cure, according to one's needs." Lawson marveled at the Indians' success in treating "one of our company for lameness by scratching the same limb with a comb of rattlesnake fangs and applying a dressing of dried and ground sassafras, binding it up well. The patient recovered completely in a day or two."
Mark Gatesby, an English naturalist who spent years in colonial American, wrote a two-volume book, A Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1754). He had an interesting comment on sassafras: "The Virtue of this Tree is well-known as the great sweetener of the Blood; I shall therefore only add, that in Virginia a strong Decoction of the Root has been sometimes given with good Success for an intermittent fever."
COMMENTS
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imagesinwords
00:37 Apr 30 2008
That's freakin' WAY cute.
Morrigon
00:37 Apr 30 2008
Awwwww
Vampirewitch39
00:50 Apr 30 2008
Well they do have Morrigon nose. O.o
Cute. :)
captainglobehead
02:55 Apr 30 2008
Very cute. They resemble hedgehogs i used to own.
Beastt17
11:45 Apr 30 2008
I've never seen a baby porcupine but if I had to guess, I'd have said baby hedgehogs. They're prickly and adorable!
Joli
14:33 Apr 30 2008
hmmmm...I think you're right. baby porcupine
But in my defense, google "baby porcupines" and note what pops up over and over.
BLOODLIFE
14:43 Apr 30 2008
omg, so cute ... but watch them grow into pricks..
Sinora
19:48 Apr 30 2008
Omg....cute overload lol
necrop
22:01 Apr 30 2008
that picture has just brightened my day.
Oceanne
14:36 May 01 2008
Now how cute is that!!! Aww their little feet