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Elisabeth C. Miller Library

Keyword: Ethnobotany

aromatic Devil’s club

I came across a reference to the aromatic scent of Devil’s club, and wondered which part of the plant is fragrant, and how it is used.

Despite its daunting common name and repellent species name, the wood of Oplopanax horridus, particularly the inner bark, is said to be sweetly aromatic. According to an article, “Devil’s Club (Oplopanax horridus): An Ethnobotanical Review” from HerbalGram (Spring 2014, Issue 62), the Makah tribe has used an unspecified part of the plant much as one would use talcum powder for infants. This is elaborated upon by Erna Gunther’s Ethnobotany of Western Washington (1973), which says that Green River peoples dry the bark and pulverize it for use as a deodorant.

Other tribes have used an infusion of the bark as a skin wash. Nancy J. Turner’s Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge (2014), mentions that “bathing in a solution of devil’s club is said to make one strong,” and so the plant might be used prior to contests of strength or hunting.

[By coincidence, there is a common perfume ingredient with a very similar name, opopanax, but it is derived neither from Opopanax (in the Apiaceae) nor Oplopanax (in the Araliaceae). Some say its source is the resin of Commiphora guidottii (a plant in the Apiaceae that is native to Ethiopia and Somalia), and goes by the names scented myrrh, bissabol, and habak hadi. Others say it is derived from the flowers of sweet acacia, Vachellia farnesiana (Fabaceae).]

 

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historical medicinal uses of asafetida

What can you tell me about asafetida? I know it is used in cooking (especially in India), but is it used medicinally?

 

The plant source of asafetida is Ferula assa-foetida, a perennial in the Apiaceae (carrot) family. As you mention, it is used in cooking, primarily the cooked leaves and shoots, but also the sap or gum which is extracted from the plant’s roots and dried as resin or pulverized into powder. It has a very pungent sulfurous odor, especially in resin form. In Africa, Ferula was a substitute for Silphium, whose extinction was recorded by Pliny the Elder in 77 C.E.

The plant resin is also used medicinally in other parts of the world, including the Middle East and Europe. Around the world, it has an array of common names, many of them variants on devil’s excrement, due to the odor.

According to Judith Taylor’s Plants in the Civil War, asafetida came to America with enslaved Africans who had multiple medicinal, magical, and apotropaic (protective, warding off evil) uses for it. Among enslaved people in this country, there was a tradition of wearing a red flannel bag containing the plant’s roots and additives like red pepper, sassafras, and snakeroot. Colin Fitzgerald’s “African American Slave Medicine of the 19th Century” (Bridgewater State University Undergraduate Review, 12, 44-50, 2016) goes into greater depth. Here is an excerpt:

“Victoria Adams, of Columbia, South Carolina, recalls using the plant as a preventive measure against diseases on her plantation,'[w]e dipped asafetida in turpentine and hung it ‘round our necks to keep off disease’ (Slave Narratives). Asafetida was used as preventative against a number of pulmonary diseases such as whooping cough, bronchitis, small pox, and influenza. It was usually placed in a bag around someone’s neck so that they could breathe in the fumes. Asafetida is found to have worked as an anti-flatulent by reducing the amount of indigenous microflora in the gut. Because of its close relation with the famed silphium of Cyrene (belonging to the same family, ferula), it has also been reported to contain naturally occurring organic contraceptive compounds.”

 

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Searching for sweetgrass

My book club is reading Robin Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Do you know anywhere I could go to smell and see the plant? Might some be planted outside the Burke Museum, or at the Center for Urban Horticulture? What are local native uses of the plant?

 

illustration of sweetgrass
[from The Grasses of British Columbia by William A. Hubbard] Photo: illustration by Frank L. Beebe

In the context of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, sweetgrass probably refers to the plant whose scientific name is Hierochloe odorata. It grows in limited locations in Washington State. We do not have it here at the Center for Urban Horticulture. It is unlikely to have been planted around the Burke Museum, given its preference for marshy areas. Most of their plantings are at the edges of the parking lot. However, you could call and ask. You might be able to smell sweetgrass in woven items made from the plant, though the fragrance might not be as intense as the odor of the living plants.

The trouble with common names is that they may refer to different plants (not only a different species, but even a different genus and family), depending on what region of the world one inhabits. Kimmerer, who lives in Syracuse, New York, is a member of the Potawatomi tribe. The name she uses for sweetgrass is wiingashk ᐐᓐᑲᔥᒃ᙮, which is Ojibwe, a language that is linguistically similar to Potawatomi.

To give just one example of the potential for confusion, there is a Pacific Northwest ‘sweetgrass’ used by basket weavers on the Olympic Peninsula which is Schoenoplectus pungens, also called chairmaker’s clubrush or common three square, an entirely different genus in the sedge family (not in the grass family). The book does not mention its use for incense or fragrance, but the species name (pungens) does suggest it has an aroma, though possibly a sharp but not a sweet one. [source: From the Hands of a Weaver: Olympic Peninsula Basketry through Time, University of Oklahoma Press, 2012]

Examples of Hierochloe odorata’s use in the Pacific Northwest:

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Yungcautnguuq nunam qainga tamarmi = All the land’s surface is medicine : edible and medicinal plants of southwest Alaska

For 15 years, the Elisabeth C. Miller Library has been hosting an exhibit by the Pacific Northwest Botanical Artists every spring.  These artists keep alive a tradition of many centuries by creating scientifically accurate portrayals of the flowers, leaves, seeds, and other parts of plants, often with more detail and accuracy than a photograph.

One of the local, participating artist is Sharon Birzer.  Recently, she illustrated many of the native plants of southwest Alaska, published in “Yungcautnguuq nunam qainga tamarmi = All the Land’s Surface is Medicine.”  This new book is written by a consortium of experts in cultural anthropology, ethnobotany, and the Yup’ik language, and is based on a 20-year oral history project to preserve the stories of elders and their traditional way of life.

The book is divided equally into two parts.  The first is a catalog of the native plants used for food or medicine, organized by the time of harvest and starting with the plants that define the spring after long, cold winters.  One example is Mertensia maritima or Neqnirliaraat, literally “best-tasting things,” a plant I grow in my garden.  Although not widely used, “one Nelson Island woman reported collecting them before they flowered, cooking the stems briefly, and eating them with seal oil.”

The traditional tales of the plants and the land where they grow are collected in the second half of the book.  Quoting many of the elders, these entries are in English on the left page, and in Yup’ik on the right.  This includes “mouse foods,” caches of plants parts harvested and stored by voles and lemmings before the onset of winter, and an important source of food for humans.

Winner of the 2022 Annual Literature Award from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries.

Excerpted from the Fall 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Iwígara

The earliest gardeners in North America were not European settlers but the peoples of the indigenous nations, especially in our region.  “All native peoples of the West Coast engaged in some form of complex and sophisticated ‘gardening’ of their homelands.”

This observation is by Enrique Salmón, the author of a new book on American Indian ethnobotanical traditions.   The book’s title tells part of the story.  “Iwígara” (i-WEE-jah-rah) is the concept that humans are no greater than other forms of life in the natural world, including both plants and animals.

Ethnobotany, the study of the use of plants by human cultures, is an important way to understand different civilizations.  Sadly, much of the existing literature can bog down in academic minutiae.  Not so with “Iwígara” and Salmón’s excellent story-telling!  This is a lively and thoroughly readable account of eighty plants significant to the indigenous nations of North America, told using delightful legends and the common practices that have bonded peoples and the plants of their local landscape.

Salmón is an accomplished scientist and an active collaborator with others in his field and he used that network to help determine the plants to include.  He also brings a more personal viewpoint.  As a member of the Rarámuri (rah-RAH-mer-ree) nation of northwestern Mexico, he learned the plant traditions from his mother, grandmother and other family members “who were living libraries of indigenous plant knowledge that has been collected, revised, and tested for millennia.”

An example is the entry on cedar.  “Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest tell a story about a good man who gave unceasingly to his community.”  After his death, “the Creator, so impressed with the life this man had led, decided that a great useful tree would grow from the man’s burial site.”  According to this legend, this was the first western red cedar (Thuja plicata).

Indeed, this is a useful tree to many regional cultures for buildings, canoes, tools, clothing, and medicines.  Throughout “Iwígara,” well-chosen photographs, both old and new, enhance the stories.  “Cedar” is highlighted by an impressive 1914 photograph of Kwakiutl cedar mask dancers.

 

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Summer 2021

 

Douglas fir tea

There seems to be a new fad of local foragers making tea from the needles of Douglas fir and Grand fir. I am guessing there are Native American origins to this practice. How safe is it, especially in an urban environment? Are there supposed to be benefits to drinking this kind of infusion?

 

There is a deep tradition of ethnobotanical uses of various parts of both Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and Grand fir (Abies grandis). Nancy Turner’s book, Thompson Ethnobotany: Knowledge and Usage of Plants by the Thompson Indians of British Columbia (Royal British Columbia Museum, 1990) says that “a beverage tea was made by boiling Douglas-fir twigs with their needles. This tea was said to have tonic and diuretic properties.”

Turner says there is a great deal of confusion surrounding both the English common names and Thompson Indian names for various fir species. This makes it difficult to know which species were intended for which uses. An infusion made from the boughs of a species that might be Grand fir (Abies grandis) “could be drunk for any illness.” In Ethnobotany of Western Washington (University of Washington Press, 1973), author Erna Gunther notes both distinctions and confusions between Abies grandis and Pseudotsuga menziesii: according to the Green River informant she consulted, tribe members boiled Grand fir needles as a tea to treat colds, but a Swinomish informant believed Grand fir and Douglas fir to be the same species.

Douglas fir and Grand fir are not mentioned in Toxic Plants of North America (George Burrows and Ronald Tyrl, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), but a plant’s absence from a list of toxic plants does not mean that it is risk-free. Common sense says it would be best not to gather needles from urban trees that are not your own, since there is no way of knowing whether those trees might have been sprayed with pesticides, or exposed to air pollutants.

According to Stephen Facciola’s Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants (Kampong Publications, 1998), tea made from young foliage and twigs of Pseudotsuga menziesii is both refreshing and high in vitamin C. He says that the young branch tips of various species of Abies, including A. grandis, are used as a tea substitute.

I could not find reliable information about the recommended quantities of needles to water, ideal length of boiling time, or chemical properties of needles used for tea. Elise Krohn, author of Wild Rose and Western Red Cedar: The Gifts of the Northwest Plants (self-published in 2007) has information on her Wild Foods and Medicines blog about “making evergreen tree tip tea.” My advice would be to proceed with caution and consult a medical professional in case a coniferous tisane might have potential interactions with other substances. (Even a popular beverage like Earl Grey tea can be problematic due to the Citrus-derived bergamottin which interacts with some medications).

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Noug or Niger seeds

I bought some shiny dark seeds at an Ethiopian grocery store. The proprietor said they were good for sore throat. The name of the seed sounded something like ‘nuk.’ Can you tell me what plant they are from? And is it safe to use them?

 

By guessing at different possible spellings, I came across a plant whose Amharic name sounds like ‘nuk’ or ‘noug.’ I also showed your sample seeds to an Eritrean colleague, and confirmed that they were familiar to him for their high oil content, but also for steeping in hot water to make a kind of tonic. I can’t recommend consuming them medicinally; you would need to speak to a medical professional. But I can tell you that the plant source is Guizotia abyssinica. It is in the daisy family (Asteraceae), and has a yellow flower that might remind you a little of a yellow daisy. There is research being done at University of British Columbia’s Botany department on this plant and its potential as a crop to increase food security and alleviate poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Purdue University researchers are looking into cultivating this plant (also called Nigerseed) in the Midwestern United States.

Wikipedia has additional information about this plant.

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Garden Tip #84

Cyclamen start blooming in the fall. Diana Wells, in her book 100 Flowers and How They Got Their Names (Algonquin Books, 1997) reports that Cyclamen’s common name is “sowbread” because they were supposedly used to feed pigs. The name cyclamen comes from the Greek “kyklo” meaning circle and probably referring to the seed stalks that curl up to a tight coil as they ripen.

Wells writes about another autumn flower, Japanese anemones. Plant hunter Robert Fortune sent seeds of the plant to England in 1844. He noted these white flowering perennials were often growing on graves in China and remarked Anemone “[a] most appropriate ornament for the last resting places of the dead.”

A few other fun books on the lore and history of plants are Cornucopia the Lore of Fruits and Vegetables by Annie Lise Roberts (Knickerbocker, 1998) with colorful photos and recipes and the classic Who named the Daisy, Who named the Rose by Mary Durant (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1976) that gives a folk history of American wildflowers.

Flora Celtica

Flora Celtica cover If I could only have one book on Scottish plants, it would be “Flora Celtica: Plants and People in Scotland.” While the main title suggests a comprehensive, taxonomic review of natives, authors William Milliken and Sam Bridgewater instead use ethnobotany as their framework to categorize plants by their impact on humans.

And there is quite a range to this impact. Besides the expected foods, traditional crafts and medicines, this book both looks to the past — recounting much folklore and ceremony — and to the future, exploring the role of plants as we grapple with climate change, restoration and sustainability of resources.

The genius is in the presentation — turn to any page and find fascinating biographies, historical photos and drawings, even poetry and lyrics of traditional songs, all woven around a very readable text. But this is not just about history — the photographs (many by author Milliken) clearly illustrate the landscape and people of today.

“We no longer fumigate our houses with juniper leaves…or tie rowan twigs onto our cows’ tails to ward off the fairies. But we do still…decorate our homes with holly at Christmas and plant marram grass to hold back the sea. And, while some practices are being lost, others are being acquired…” This quote from the introduction captures the spirit of this large, complex, and thoroughly engaging book.

Excerpted from the Winter 2008 Arboretum Bulletin.