Sassafras Traditional Cache

Sassafras is the tree with leaves that look like mittens. This group of them is near the administration building for the Wildflower Garden. Park at the entrance to the garden off Judd Falls Rd.

Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. The genus is distinguished by its aromatic properties, which have made the tree useful to humans.

Name

The name "sassafras", applied by the botanist Nicolas Monardes in 1569, comes from the French sassafras. Some sources claim it originates from the Latin saxifraga or saxifragus: "stone-breaking;" saxum "rock" + frangere "to break"). Early European colonists reported that the plant was called winauk by Native Americans in Delaware and Virginia and pauane by the Timucua. Native Americans distinguished between white sassafras and red sassafras, which terms referred to the same plant but to different parts of the plant with distinct colors and uses. Sassafras was known as fennel wood (German Fenchelholz) due to its distinctive aroma.

Description

Sassafras trees grow from 9–35 m (30–115 ft) tall with many slender sympodial branches, and smooth, orange-brown bark or yellow bark. All parts of the plants are fragrant. The species are unusual in having three distinct leaf patterns on the same plant: unlobed oval, bilobed (mitten-shaped), and trilobed (three-pronged); the leaves are hardly ever five-lobed.

Three-lobed leaves are more common in sassafras tzumu and sassafras randaiense than in their North American counterparts, although three-lobed leaves do sometimes occur on sassafras albidum. The young leaves and twigs are quite mucilagninous, and produce a citrus-like scent when crushed. The tiny, yellow flowers are five-petaled; sassafras albidum and sassafras hesperia are dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate trees, while sassafras tzumu and sassafras randaiense have male and female flowers occurring on the same trees. The fruit is a drupe, blue-black when ripe.

The largest known sassafras tree in the world is located in Owensboro, kentucky, and measures over 100 feet high and 21 feet in circumference.

Habitat and range

Many Lauraceae are aromatic, evergreen trees or shrubs adapted to high rainfall and humidity, but the Sassafras genus is deciduous. Deciduous sassafras trees lose all of their leaves for part of the year, depending on variations in rainfall. In deciduous tropical Lauraceae, leaf loss coincides with the dry season in tropical, subtropical and arid regions. In temperate climates, the dry season is due to the inability of the plant to absorb water available to it only in the form of ice.

Sassafras is commonly found in open woods, along fences, or in fields. It grows well in moist, well-drained, or sandy loam soils and tolerates a variety of soil types, attaining a maximum in southern and wetter areas of distribution.

Sassafras albidum (sassafras, white sassafras, red sassafras, or silky sassafras) is a species of Sassafras native to eastern North America, from southern Maine and southern Ontario west to Iowa, and south to central Florida and eastern Texas. It occurs throughout the eastern deciduous habitat type, at altitudes of sea level up to 1,500 m (5000 feet). It formerly also occurred in southern Wisconsin, but is extirpated there as a native tree.

Importance to wildlife

The leaves, bark, twigs, stems, and fruits are eaten by birds and mammals in small quantities. For most animals, Sassafras is not consumed in large enough quantities to be important, although it is an important deer food in some areas. Carey and Gill rate its value to wildlife as fair, their lowest rating. Sassafras leaves and twigs are consumed by white-tailed deer and porcupines. Other sassafras leaf browsers include groundhogs, marsh rabbits, and American black bears. Rabbits eat sassafras bark in winter. American beavers will cut sassafras stems. Sassafras fruits are eaten by many species of birds. Some small mammals also consume sassafras fruits.

Species

The genus sassafras includes four species, three extant and one extinct. Sassafras plants are endemic to North America and East Asia, with two species in each region that are distinguished by some important characteristics, including the frequency of three-lobed leaves (more frequent in East Asian species) and aspects of their sexual reproduction (North American species are dioecious).

Taiwanese sassafras', Taiwan, is treated by some botanists in a distinct genus as Yushunia randaiensis (Hayata) Kamikoti, though this is not supported by recent genetic evidence, which shows Sassafras to be monophyletic.

Description

Sassafras albidum is a medium-sized deciduous tree growing to 15–20 m tall, with a trunk up to 60 cm diameter, and a crown with many slender sympodial branches. The bark on trunk of mature trees is thick, dark red-brown, and deeply furrowed. The shoots are bright yellow green at first with mucilaginous bark, turning reddish brown, and in two or three years begin to show shallow fissures. The leaves are alternate, green to yellow-green, ovate or obovate, 10–16 cm (4-6.4 inches) long and 5–10 cm (2-4 inches) broad with a short, slender, slightly grooved petiole.

They come in three different shapes, all of which can be on the same branch; three-lobed leaves, unlobed elliptical leaves, and two-lobed leaves; rarely, there can be more than three lobes. In fall, they turn to shades of yellow, tinged with red. 

The Flowers are produced in loose, drooping, few-flowered racemes up to 5 cm long in early spring shortly before the leaves appear; they are yellow to greenish-yellow, with five or six tepals.

It is usually dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate trees; male flowers have nine stamens, female flowers with six staminodes (aborted stamens) and a 2–3 mm style on a superior ovary. Pollination is by insects.

The fruit is a dark blue-black drupe 1 cm long containing a single seed, borne on a red fleshy club-shaped pedicel 2 cm long; it is ripe in late summer, with the seeds dispersed by birds. The cotyledons are thick and fleshy. All parts of the plant are aromatic and spicy. The roots are thick and fleshy, and frequently produce root sprouts which can develop into new trees.

Ecology

It prefers rich, well-drained sandy loam with a pH of 6-7, but will grow in any loose, moist soil. Seedlings will tolerate shade, but saplings and older trees demand full sunlight for good growth; in forests it typically regenerates in gaps created by windblow. Growth is rapid, particularly with root sprouts, which can reach 1.2 m (4 feet) in the first year and 4.5 m (15 feet)in 4 years. Root sprouts often result in dense thickets, and a single tree, if allowed to spread unrestrained, will soon be surrounded by a sizable clonal colony, as its stoloniferous roots extend in every direction and send up multitudes of shoots.

Humans and Sassafras albidum

All parts of the Sassafras albidum plant have been used for human purposes, including stems, leaves, bark, wood, roots, fruit, and flowers. Sassafras albidum, while native to North America, is significant to the economic, medical, and cultural history of both Europe and North America. In North America, it has particular culinary significance, being featured in distinct national foods such as traditional root beer, file powder, and Louisiana Creole cuisine. Sassafras albidum was an important plant to many Native Americans of the southeastern United States and was used for many purposes, including culinary and medicinal purposes, before the European colonization of North America. Its significance for Native Americans is also magnified, as the European quest for sassafras as a commodity for export brought Europeans into closer contact with Native Americans during the early years of European settlement in the 16th and 17th centuries, in Florida, Virginia, and other parts of the Northeast

Sassafras albidum and indigenous peoples of the United States

Sassafras albidum was a well-used plant by Native Americans in the southeastern United States prior to the European colonization. The Choctaw word for sassafras is "Kombu." It was known as "Winauk" in Delaware and Virginia and is called "Pauane" by the Timuca.

Some Native American tribes used the leaves of sassafras to treat wounds by rubbing the leaves directly into a wound, and used different parts of the plant for many medicinal purposes such as treating acne, urinary disorders, and sicknesses that increased body temperature, such as high fevers. They also used the bark as a dye, and as a flavoring.

Sassafras wood was also used by Native Americans in the southeastern United States as a fire-starter because of the flammability of its natural oils.

In cooking, sassafras was used by some Native Americans to flavor bear fat, and to cure meats. Sassafras is still used today to cure meats. Use of filé powder by the Choctaw in the Southern United States in cooking is linked to the development of gumbo, a signature dish of Louisiana Creole cuisine.

Culinary use by Europeans in North America, and legislation

Sassafras albidum is used in two distinct foods of the United States: as a thickener and flavouring in the Louisiana Creole dish called gumbo and as the key ingredient in traditional root beer.

Sassafras roots are used to make traditional root beer, although they were banned for commercially mass-produced foods and drugs by the FDA in 1960. Laboratory animals that were given oral doses of sassafras tea or sassafras oil that contained large doses of safrole developed permanent liver damage or various types of cancer.In humans, liver damage can take years to develop and it may not have obvious signs. Along with commercially available Sarsaparilla, sassafras remains an ingredient in use among hobby or microbrew enthusiasts. While sassafras is no longer used in commercially produced root beer and is sometimes substituted with artificial flavors, natural extracts with the safrole distilled and removed are available. Most commercial root beers have replaced the sassafras extract with methyl salycylate, the ester found in wintergreen and black birch (Betula lenta) bark.

Sassafras tea was also banned in the United States 1977, but the ban was lifted with the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994.

S. albidum is a host plant for the spicebush swallowtail.

The wood is dull orange brown, hard, and durable in contact with the soil; it was used in the past for posts and rails, small boats and ox-yokes, though scarcity and small size limits current use. Some is still used for making furniture.

History exploitation and commodification of the Sassafras albidum plant

Europeans were first introduced to sassafras, along with other plants such as cranberries, tobacco and ginseng,when they arrived in North America.

The aromatic smell of sassafras was described by early European settlers arriving in North America. According to one legend, Christopher Columbus found North America because he could smell the scent of sassafras. As early as the 1560s, French visitors to North America discovered the medicinal qualities of sassafras, which was also exploited by the Spanish who arrived in Florida. English settlers at Roanoke reported surviving on boiled sassafras leaves and dog meat during times of starvation.

Upon the arrival of the English on the Eastern coast of North America, sassafras trees were reported as plentiful. Sassafras was sold in England and in continental Europe, where it was sold as a dark beverage called "saloop" that had medicinal qualities and used as a medicinal cure for a variety of ailments. The discovery of sassafras occurred at the same time as a severe syphilis outbreak in Europe, when little about this terrible disease was understood, and sassafras was touted as a cure. Sir Francis Drake was one of the earliest to bring sassafras to England in 1586, and Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to export sassafras as a commodity in 1602. Sassafras became a major export commodity to England and other areas of Europe, as a medicinal root used to treat ague (fevers) and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea, and as wood prized for its beauty and durability. Exploration for sassafras was the catalyst for the 1603 commercial expedition from Bristol of Captain Martin Ping to the coasts of present-day Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts.During a brief period in the early 17th century, sassafras was the second-largest export from the British colonies in North America behind tobacco.

Since the bark was the most commercially valued part of the sassafras plant due to large concentrations of the aromatic safrole oil, commercially valuable sassafras could only be gathered from each tree once. This meant that as significant amounts of sassafras bark was gathered, supplies quickly diminished and sassafras become more difficult to find. For example, while one of the earliest shipments of sassafras in 1602 weighed as much as a ton, by 1626, English colonists failed to meet their 30-pound quota. The gathering of sassafras bark brought European settlers and Native Americans into contact sometimes dangerous to both groups. Sassafras was such a desired commodity in England, that its importation was included in the Charter of the Colony of Virginia in 1610.

Through modern times, the sassafras plant has been exploited for the extraction of safrole, which is used in a variety of commercial products as well as in the manufacture of illegal drugs like MDMA (ecstasy); yet, sassafras plants in China and Brazil are more commonly used for these purposes than North American Sassafras albidum.

The cache is a tied in, camoed, "small" pill bottle. This new cache has a lid with a tab to push up. There's an arrow pointing to the tab. Please make sure it's sealed all around when you're done. Please BYOP and keep track of everything, so you can put it back as found