Cherokee Snakebite Remedies

 Just yesterday, I was reading "my kind of article,"  Cherokee Snakebite Remedies, by David Cozzo.  What I like about it is that the author compiles a number of historic documents that address the topic, and provides helpful context for those documents.  That is pretty much the formula I use for many of the posts on this site.  When something is done so well, as with Cozzo's article, I don't see any need to reinvent or recreate the good work.  In reading the article, though, there was one thing missing:  a summary list or index of the many plants mentioned as possible remedies. And that is the point of today's post.

This beauty, stationed in the middle of Wolf Ridge Trail (Great Smoky Mountains National Park), greeted us as we descended from Gregory Bald on June 16, 2013.

I highly recommend Cozzo's article and I think my contribution adds to its value.  My initial reaction to the article was "Yes, it is interesting to read these old accounts of medicinal plants, but in a crisis would I count on them?"  I'll admit that I would be calling 911 during a snakebite emergency.  On the other hand, such an event would likely occur deep in the woods somewhere.  I would stand a good chance of putting my hands on one or more of these plants long before the arrival of paramedics.  So, as a practical matter and not just cultural trivia, the article warrants more study.

These lists could be improved upon.  I suspect the taxonomy needs to be cleaned up.  The popular names of plants are so often interchangeable, and even the scientific names change over time.  Many of the accounts cited by Cozzo are from the 18th and 19th centuries and therefore the listings might not reflect current botanical nomenclature.  

Plants Mentioned in Cozzo article, alphabetical by scientific name:

Ageratina altissima	White Snakeroot
Amphicarpa bracteata	Hog Peanut
Angelica venenosa	Hairy Angelica
Aristolochia serpentaria	Virginia Snakeroot
Asplenium rhizophyllum	Snake’s Tongue
Botrychium virginianum	Rattlesnake Fern
Cacalia atriplicifolia	Pale Indian Plantain
Cicuta maculata	Wild Parsnip
Coronilla varia	Crown Vetch
Cunila origanoides	Mountain Dittany
Eryngium yuccafolium	Rattlesnake Master
Gentiana villosa	Sampson Snakeroot
Helianthus annuus	Sunflower
Hepatica acutiloba	Hepatica
Hypericum gentioides	Pineweed
Hypericum hypericoides	St. Andrew’s Cross
Juncus effusus	Soft Rush
Liriodendron tulipifera	Tulip Poplar
Lobelia inflata	Indian Tobacco
Lycopus virginicus	Water Hoarhound
Pedicularis canadensis	Lousewort
Plantago major	Common Plantain
Polygala senega	Seneca Snakeroot
Prenanthes alba	Rattlesnake Root
Prunella vulgaris	Heal-all
Rhus radicans	Poison Ivy
Rudbeckia fulgida	Black-eyed Susan
Sanicula canadensis	Black Snakeroot
Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani	Soft-stemmed Bulrush
Silene stellata	Starry Campion
Spiraea trifoliata	Indian Physic
Thalictrum dioicum	Early Meadow Rue
Tilia americana	Basswood
Vicia caroliniana	Wood Vetch
Xanthium strumarium	Cocklebur

Plants Mentioned in Cozzo article, alphabetical by common name:

Basswood	Tilia americana
Black Snakeroot	Sanicula canadensis
Black-eyed Susan	Rudbeckia fulgida
Cocklebur	Xanthium strumarium
Common Plantain	Plantago major
Crown Vetch	Coronilla varia
Early Meadow Rue	Thalictrum dioicum
Hairy Angelica	Angelica venenosa
Heal-all	Prunella vulgaris
Hepatica	Hepatica acutiloba
Hog Peanut	Amphicarpa bracteata
Indian Physic	Spiraea trifoliata
Indian Tobacco	Lobelia inflata
Lousewort	Pedicularis canadensis
Mountain Dittany	Cunila origanoides
Pale Indian Plantain	Cacalia atriplicifolia
Pineweed	Hypericum gentioides
Poison Ivy	Rhus radicans
Rattlesnake Fern	Botrychium virginianum
Rattlesnake Master	Eryngium yuccafolium
Rattlesnake Root	Prenanthes alba
Sampson Snakeroot	Gentiana villosa
Seneca Snakeroot	Polygala senega
Snake’s Tongue	Asplenium rhizophyllum
Soft Rush	Juncus effusus
Soft-stemmed Bulrush	Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani
St. Andrew’s Cross	Hypericum hypericoides
Starry Campion	Silene stellata
Sunflower	Helianthus annuus
Tulip Poplar	Liriodendron tulipifera
Virginia Snakeroot	Aristolochia serpentaria
Water Hoarhound	Lycopus virginicus
White Snakeroot	Ageratina altissima
Wild Parsnip	Cicuta maculata
Wood Vetch	Vicia caroliniana

Citation for original article:

Cozzo, David (2013) "Cherokee Snakebite Remedies," Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society: Vol. 41: No. 1, Article 5.
DOI: 10.56702/MPMC7908/saspro4101.4
Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/southernanthro_proceedings/vol41/iss1/5

The Promise of Spring

All this week, and especially today, Winter has made itself known here in the Cowees. So I began to comb through my old photos for something warm and colorful to post here.  I came across the following and it touches on topics that I ponder often, and more than ever.  My affinity with the plant world, for which I am so grateful, grows deeper and deeper with each new season.

[From February 22, 2010]

Biophilia

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
-Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia



By the end of next month, I’ll be out in the woods slithering around on my belly to take pictures of early spring wildflowers.

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends again. Throughout this cold winter, though, I’ve seen them in my mind’s eye. Just beneath the surface of the frozen ground, they’ve been there all along. Even on the bleakest days, the bright colors of spring are near.

Last year, I began to get serious about learning the wildflowers. I regret waiting so long. It could be a lifelong quest, no matter how long your life, and I’ve learned just enough to recognize how little I know. It’s one thing to identify individual specimens in bloom, but quite another to understand them in a fuller context.

Over the winter, I’ve considered how to botanize this year - by finding a different frame through which to view the world. I got some help with this by attending a native plant symposium over the weekend, hosted by the North Carolina Native Plant Society, Asheville Chapter. By the end of the day, I had some ideas for new perspectives on the upcoming woodland rambles. 

For now, from the symposium…

Tom Baugh, a biologist and former poetry editor of Rapid River magazine, began the day with a discussion of life on earth and our human connection to other life. Baugh shared the quote from E. O. Wilson that I used at the beginning of this post.

E. O. Wilson, a Harvard University entomologist, coined the term "biophilia" referring to our innate affinity with nature. Wilson’s hypothesis is that humans evolved as creatures deeply enmeshed with the intricacies of nature, and that we still have this affinity with nature ingrained in our genotype.

His book, Biophilia, The Human Bond with Other Species, includes essays on his own journey of understanding:

I have argued in this book that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.

Among those inspired by Wilson’s eloquent argument is social ecologist Stephen Kellert who has applied biophilia to the design of buildings and communities, as described in the book Biophilic Design: The Theory, Science and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life:

This book offers a paradigm shift in how we design and build our buildings and our communities, one that recognizes that the positive experience of natural systems and processes in our buildings and constructed landscapes is critical to human health, performance, and well-being. Biophilic design is about humanity's place in nature and the natural world's place in human society, where mutuality, respect, and enriching relationships can and should exist at all levels and should emerge as the norm rather than the exception.

Wilson and Kellert co-edited The Biophilia Hypothesis, a collection of invited papers supporting & refuting the biophilia hypothesis

Here are a few thoughts from E. O. Wilson:

The great philosophical divide in moral reasoning about the remainder of life is whether or not other species have an innate right to exist.

Biodiversity is the most information-rich part of the known universe. More organisation and complexity exists in a handful of soil than on the surfaces of all the other planets combined.

Biodiversity of a country is part of its national inheritance - the product of the deep history of the territory extending long back before the coming of man.

Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future. This spiritual craving cannot be satisfied by the colonisation of space. The other planets are inhospitable and immensely expensive to reach. The nearest stars are so far away that voyagers would need thousands of years just to report back. The true frontier for humanity is life on earth, its exploration and the transport of knowledge about it into science, art and practical affairs. Again, the qualities of life that validate the proposition are: 90% or more of species of plants, animals and micro organisms, lack even so much as a scientific name; each of the species is immensely old by human standards and has been wonderfully moulded to its environment. Life around us exceeds in complexity and beauty anything else humanity is ever likely to encounter.

The manifold ways by which human beings are tied to the remainder of life are very poorly understood, crying for new scientific enquiry and a boldness of aesthetic interpretation.

---

Wildflower photos from Spring 2009 include (from top):

Geranium maculatum

Trillium erectum

Sanguinaria canadensis

Erythronium americanum

Magnolias at "La Tete de Kiwi"

 [From December 15, 2009, continuing the story of Andre Michaux's visit to South Carolina's Keowee Valley in December 1788]

I was received with a great deal of courtesy by the mistress of the house whose husband was away. This woman was young, beautiful, but very devout, and continually reflecting on the different ways of thought among the Methodists, Anabaptists and Quakers. Conversations on these subjects went from seven until ten-thirty; I then became bored with it in spite of the kindness and charm of this woman, and I went to bed.
-Andre Michaux, December 1, 1788



The more I delve into Andre Michaux’s December 1788 expedition to the Southern mountains, the more contradictions I find. This trip has earned a place in the history of botanical explorations because Michaux collected specimens of Shortia galacifolia at the head of the Keowee River, and it took a century for subsequent researchers to locate the source of those plants. But the Oconee Bell was not the object of Michaux’s field trip. He was intent on finding Magnolia cordata, a rare tree mentioned by William Bartram on his 1775 trip through the mountains.

If diverse flora was one appeal of the region, Michaux also found a great diversity of people living on this frontier. By all descriptions, the Frenchman was a good conversationalist and well-mannered, but his diary reflects annoyances along the way. On December 1, he arrived near the head of the Savannah River (at the confluence of the Keowee and Tugaloo Rivers) where he stayed at the home of home of a Mr. Freeman (as described above).

Detour Via Cleveland's Ferry

Rather than proceeding straight up the Keowee, Michaux headed northwest along the Tugaloo. He traveled about twenty miles on December 2 and spent the night at the home of Larkin Cleveland. On December 3, he crossed the river to breakfast at the home of John Cleveland:

I crossed the Tugaloo River at the only place used for fording. It was so dangerous that two of our horses narrowly escaped drowning.

Larkin and John had fought beside their brother, Colonel Benjamin Cleveland, who was a hero at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. Cleveland counties in North Carolina and Georgia, and the town of Cleveland, Tennessee were all named for the Colonel. After the Revolution, the three Cleveland brothers brought their families to the Tugaloo just east of Toccoa, Georgia.

Returning to Keowee River

Leaving the Tugaloo, Michaux went east, spending the night of December 3 sleeping on the ground at Seneca. That night he wrote that his twenty mile trip had been:

…through country completely covered with forests, like all southern provinces, but it was very hilly…

Michaux spent a couple of days botanizing on the Keowee. On December 6, he proceeded upriver to some unnamed Indian village, where he spent the night with a hospitable native family.

On December 7, after securing a Cherokee guide to accompany him, Michaux continued about fourteen miles up the river, camping on the shores of the river at the foot of the mountains.

Magnolias and Wet Dogs

The next day, Michaux drew closer to the head of the Keowee and found the way becoming more and more difficult. About two miles before the head of the river, Michaux recognized the Magnolia cordata he had been seeking, collected specimens of “a new plant with denticulated leaves” (later identified as Shortia) and also found a place to stay for the night:

In this area there was a small hut inhabited by a family of Cherokee Indians. We stopped there to camp… The weather changed and it rained the whole night. Although we took shelter under a large white pine our clothing and blankets were drenched and soaked. Around the middle of the night I went into the hut of the Indians which could barely hold the family of eight persons, men and women. There were further six large dogs which added to the dirtiness of this housing and to the inconvenience. The fire was in the middle, without an opening on top of the hut to let the smoke escape; however, there were enough openings all over the roofing of this house to let the rain in. One Indian offered me his bed which consisted of a bear skin and took my place by the fire. But finally I was so annoyed by the dogs, which fought all the time for a place by the fire; that I returned to rny camp, especially since the rain had ceased.

On December 9, Michaux wanted to investigate the more precipitous of the two headwater streams to reach the highest mountains:

We had to cross precipices and creeks covered with fallen trees where ten times our horses plunged down and came close to perishing. We climbed up to a waterfall where the thunder of the falling water resembled distant shots of musketeers. The Indians said that at night fires could be seen at this place. I wanted to camp there, but the unexpected snow and the wind were so cold that we looked for an area lower on the mountain that was less exposed to the cold and that had more grass for our horses. The night was terribly cold. There was only pinewood to keep up the fire which burned poorly due to several snowfalls. Our snow-covered blankets became stiff with ice shortly after having been warmed.




Despite the cold temperatures. Michaux collected plants all of December 10 and for part of December 11:

I noticed a chain of high mountains stretching from west to east and where the frost showed little in places exposed to the sun. I gathered a ground juniper (Juniperus repens) that I had not yet noticed in the middle parts of the United States… On these mountains I saw several trees of the northern regions such as river birch (Betula nigra), alternate-leaved dogwood, white pine, hemlock spruce, etc. We crossed an area of about three miles through rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum).

Botanizing in December

By the evening of the 11th, Michaux had returned to the head of the Keowee. On December 12, he was retracing his steps as he continued downriver:

We kept close to the river and saw several flocks of wild turkeys. Our Indian guide fired at them, but the rifle failed several times since we had not been able to protect it from the rain in the preceding days. Thus our supper consisted of a few chestnuts that our Indian guide had gotten from another of his nation. We made eighteen miles. The weather was very clear. The freeze set in early in the evening, and, after having asked my Indian to tell me the names of several plants in his language, I wrote my journal by the light of the moon.

On December 13th I attempted to shoot a wild turkey at daybreak; there were plenty in this area but I was unsuccessful and we broke camp without breakfast. We were famished and changed our direction towards a camp of Indian hunters, and, although the hills became less steep, it was one o'clock in the afternoon before we arrived there after a journey of six hours estimated at only fifteen miles.

They cooked bear meat for us, cut into small pieces and fried in bear grease. Although it was smothered in grease, we had an excellent dinner, and, although I ate a lot of the fattest part of the meat, I did not become indisposed. The bear grease is tasteless and resembles a good olive oil. It doesn't even have a smell. When some food is roasted with it, it does not congeal until it freezes. After dinner, we made sixteen miles and arrived at Seneca in the evening.

A Geographic Debate

What Andre Michaux actually meant by “the head of the Keowee” has been a subject of disagreement for many years. In 1886, seeking the same patch of Shortia that Michaux had described, Charles Sargent attempted to retrace the 1788 journey. Sargent had his own theory about “tete de Kiwi”:

It has been suggested that the spot described by Michaux as the "Tete de Kiwi" might have been the junction of two rapid mountain torrents, the White Water and the Devil's Fork... It is more probable however, that the spot described as the head of the Keowee is the junction of the Toxaway and Horse Pasture Rivers, several miles above the mouth of the White Water and close to the North Carolina boundary… They are swift rivers flowing through beds cut deep in the rock, broken by innumerable rapids, and full of logs and boulders; in each about six miles from its mouth is a noble fall, or rather a series of cascades of great height and beauty. It was near one of these falls probably that Michaux wished to camp on the evening of the 9th of December, and the evidence favors the belief that it was the falls of the Toxaway.

Sargent believed that Michaux found the old Indian trail that continued up the Toxaway and crossed the Blue Ridge Divide between Hogback and Tigertail (now Panthertail) Mountains. This would have brought Michaux to the Tuckasegee headwaters that flow through Panthertown Valley. According to Sargent, the distant chain of high mountains that Michaux observed on December 11, 1788 would have been the Balsams.

Subsequent investigators have challenged Charles Sargent’s conclusions. In 1983, Robert Zahner and Steven Jones published the results of their attempt to follow Michaux’s path. They assert that the “head of the Keowee” mentioned by Michaux was actually the confluence of the Whitewater and the Toxaway, rather the confluence of the Toxaway and Horsepasture as claimed by Sargent. Instead of going up the Toxaway, Michaux went up the Whitewater to reach the “high mountains” (Chimney Top, Terrapin and Sassafras) where he botanized on December 10 and 11. Zahner and Jones explain that the spot where Michaux collected Shortia, two miles downriver from the head of the Keowee, was very near where Jocassee Dam stands today. This was also the location of an old Cherokee village called “Toxaway” destroyed by Colonel Archibald Montgomery in 1760.

Loyalists and Tories

I would like to see more evidence before casting my vote for one theory over another. Some of that evidence, though, is lost beneath the waters of Lake Jocassee. What remains indisputable is Andre Michaux’s ability to meet the challenges of exploring the backcountry. While returning to Charleston after his December 1788 trip through the mountains, Michaux encountered difficulties of a different kind. His biographers, Henry and Elizabeth Savage, describe the events of December 21:

After fording twenty large streams in bitter cold weather, he sought shelter and warmth in the home of an American loyalist with no love for Frenchmen. “This American tory said to me on my arrival that he would kill me if I spent the night at his house,” recounted the botanist, “and I told him I was not afraid of that because I was not fat enough nor my purse either! He wanted to badger me about my country but I was a match for him and he had to be content with making me pay dearly for my lodging.”

POSTSCRIPT

The illustrations, above, are of the main object of Michaux’s trip, the plant he identified in his journal as Magnolia cordata. He brought back specimens that were introduced into cultivation, but it would be another 150 years before the tree was once again found in the wild.

The “cucumber tree” or “cucumber magnolia,” notable for its rich yellow blossoms is now considered a variant of the Magnolia acuminata species (Magnolia acuminata var. subcordata).

I’m afraid things are not quite that simple, though. Michaux’s magnolia has persisted as a subject of debate and speculation for botanists up to the present time, and for a thorough examination of this subject, we would involve William Bartram, John Fraser, Magnolia auriculata, M. macrophylla, M. fraseri, Mountain Magnolia, Frasers Magnolia and much more. This is not something I will attempt to sort out, but I'll recommend a couple of articles for any intrepid botanical sleuth who wants some context:

The late Robert Zahner has a helpful article, “Bartram’s Mountain Magnolia,” on the Chattooga Conservancy website,
http://www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?req=frasermag&quart=Su2006

And Charlie Williams published “André Michaux and the Discovery of Magnolia macrophylla in North Carolina” in Castanea, (Southern Appalachian Botanical Society), Vol. 64, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 1-13.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4034119

With apologies to Monsieur Michaux, I will call on his old friend Puc Puggy (aka William bartram) to wax rhapsodic over a tree that he saw near Mobile in the summer of 1775:

…how gaily flutter the radiated wings of the Magnolia auriculata, each branch supporting an expanded umbrella, superbly crested with a silver plume, fragrant blossom, or crimson studded strobile and fruits.

Finally (and this is not too much of a stretch) J J Cale sings about those whippoorwills that Bartram heard in the Keowee Valley where Michaux found that special magnolia.



Encore! Encore!

Andre Michaux Sets Out From Keowee

[From December 11, 2009]

 People in the Old World were always being surprised by reports from America of spiders as big as cats and birds as small as fingernails, squirrels that flew and frogs that whistled, of plants so blessed that they could cure almost any sickness and of others so strange that their discoverers were afraid to describe them, lest they be called fools or liars. Americans forested the parks of rich Europeans with sugar maples and hemlocks, filled collectors’ cabinets with mockingbirds and rattlesnakes, enlivened their gardens with fly-eating tipitiwichets and early blooming skunk cabbages. Their science was a matter of the heart as well as the mind, a way to express their feeling for their land and their countrymen’s unabashed pride in it.

- Joseph Kastner

...aromatic Calycanthean groves on the surrounding heights, the wary moor fowl thundering in the distant echoing hills, how the groves and hills ring with the shrill perpetual voice of the whip-poor-will...
-William Bartram, describing Keowee, 1775

Rhododendron calendulaceum

Whenever I'm on the Bartram Trail along the Chattooga or the Little Tennessee I revel in the privilege of walking in the footsteps of a flower-hunter whose ways with words inspired the British Romantics.

Thanks to Bartram’s Travels, our flame azaleas were transplanted to William Wordsworth’s poetry:

Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire.
(From “Ruth” by WW)

The question arises: if Andre Michaux had possessed Bartram’s literary talents, would he be better known today?

Following Bartram's Footsteps

Michaux came to the southern mountains a decade after Bartram. As far as I know, we don't have a Michaux Trail Society. Much of Michaux’s trail is lost since Lakes Jocassee and Keowee have flooded his path along the west bank of the Keowee and the Whitewater River.

In a book on early American naturalists, A Species of Eternity, Joseph Kastner indicates the respect that Michaux commanded:

William Bartram knew him as one of the very few collectors who could go over the ground that he and his father had covered and come back with plants neither of them had found.

Michaux first explored the Carolina backcountry, and the Keowee River, in 1787. Keowee, “the place of mulberries," was principal among Cherokee Lower Towns - a mother town that was a busy center of the deerskin trade. On a contemporary map, Keowee is (or would have been) about 12 miles north of Clemson, South Carolina. Today, the old village and Fort Prince George are both submerged by the waters that cool the reactors of the Oconee Nuclear Station on Lake Keowee.

Now at this point, I must interrupt. I thought this story could be told in ONE blog post. After pursuing an infinity of rabbit trails, I realize that it could take a hundred instead.

Keowee - Frontier Settlement

Keowee was on the west bank of the river, just downstream from Crow Creek. In 1753, the British established Fort Prince George on the east side, across the river from the Cherokee village. By 1760, after ongoing tensions, the British destroyed Keowee. By the time of Bartram’s visit in 1775, Keowee was a ghost town. Bartram writes:

There are several Indian mounts or tumuli, and terraces, monuments of the ancients, at the old site of Keowe, near the fort Prince George, but no Indian habitations at present; and here are several dwellings inhabited by white people concerned in the Indian trade. The old fort Prince George now bears no marks of a fortress, but serves for a trading house.

Fort Prince George, on the Keowee River

Bartram describes the Keowee valley as being “seven or eight miles in extent” and he pictures the thriving place it had been just a few years earlier:

This fertile vale within the remembrance of some old traders with whom I conversed, was one continued settlement, the swelling sides of the adjoining hills were then covered with habitations, and the rich level grounds beneath lying on the river, was cultivated and planted, which now exhibit a very different spectacle, humiliating indeed to the present generation, the posterity and feeble remains of the once potent and renowned Cherokees: the vestiges of the ancient Indian dwellings are yet visible on the feet of the hills bordering and fronting on the vale, such as posts or pillars of their habitations, &c.

Bartram remained at Keowee for a week, hoping to find a Cherokee guide to lead him safely through the mountains. He must be have been struggling with strong mixed feelings. The mid-May spectacle of “the great blue wall” was almost within reach, and yet Bartram was alone, lonely, and aware of the risk he was about to take:

Keowe is a most charming situation, and the adjacent heights are naturally so formed and disposed, as with little expensive of military architecture to be rendered almost impregnable; in a fertile vale, at this season, enamelled with the incarnate fragrant strawberries and blooming plants, through which the beautiful river meanders, sometimes gently flowing, but more frequently agitated, gliding swiftly between the fruitful strawberry banks, environed at various distances, by high hills and mountains, some rising boldly almost upright upon the verge of the expansive lawn, so as to overlook and shadow it, whilst others more lofty, superb, misty and blue, majestically mount far above.

Artist's rendering of Oconee Nuclear Station in the Keowee Valley

The evening still and calm, all silent and peaceable, a vivifying gentle breeze continually wafted from the fragrant strawberry fields, and aromatic Calycanthean groves on the surrounding heights, the wary moor fowl thundering in the distant echoing hills, how the groves and hills ring with the shrill perpetual voice of the whip-poor-will!

William Bartram

Abandoned as my situation now was, yet thank heaven many objects met together at this time, and conspired to conciliate, and in some degree compose my mind, heretofore somewhat dejected and unharmonized: all alone in a wild Indian country, a thousand miles from my native land, and a vast distance from any settlements of white people. It is true, here were some of my own colour, yet they were strangers, and though friendly and hospitable, their manners and customs of living so different from what I had been accustomed to, administered but little to my consolation: some hundred miles yet to travel, the savage vindictive inhabitants lately ill-treated by the frontier Virginians, blood being spilt between them and the injury not yet wiped away by formal treaty; the Cherokees extremely jealous of white people travelling about their mountains, especially if they should be seen peeping in amongst the rocks or digging up their earth.

With no Indian guides forthcoming, Bartram “determined to set off alone and run all risks.”

Leaving Keowee, Bartram travelled west toward Georgia. 

Traveling Upriver from Keowee

Years later, In 1788, Andre Michaux stopped near Keowee and did manage to secure a Cherokee guide before continued north along the river. The following entries from Michaux’s journal are translated from the French:

On December 6, 1788, I left for the mountains and I slept with my guide in an Indian village. The chief of the village greeted us courteously. He told us that his son, who was to return from the hunt that very evening, would lead us into the high hills to the sources of the Kiwi. But he did not return and this old man, who appeared to be about 70, offered to accompany me. This man had been born in a village near the sources of that river, he knew the mountains perfectly and I hoped that his son would not return. For supper he had us served fresh cooked deer meat and bread of corn meal mixed with sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batata). I ate with my guide who served me as an interpreter since he knew how to speak Indian. The chief ate with his wife on another bench. Then the mother of his wife and his two daughters, the one married and the younger one about 14 or 15, sat down around the pot in which they cooked the meat. These ladies were naked to the waist, each having no other garments than a single skirt.

On Sunday, December 7, the housewife roasted maize with hot ash sifted in an earthen pot. When it was a little more that half roasted it was taken off the fire where the mixed-in ashes went. It was then carried to the mortar and being crushed it was put into a fine sieve to separate the fine flour which was put into a sack as our provision. When someone is tired he puts about three spoonfulls into a vessel of water, and frequently adds some brown sugar or moist brown sugar. This also very pleasing tasty drink is a restorative which renews strength immediately. The Indians never go on a trip without a supply of this meal that they call. ..[Rokaharmony].

From 7:30 in the morning to 6 o'clock in the evening we marched about fourteen miles. We did not stop except for one hour for dinner. We camped on the banks of the Kiwi at the foot of hills among two genera of rhododendron, mountain laurel [with evergreen leaves], azalea [which sheds its leaves in winter], etc.

On December 8, 1788, as we were approaching the source of the Kiwi the paths became more difficult. Before arriving there I recognized the Magnolia montana which was named M. cordata or ariculata by Bartram. In this area there was a small hut inhabited by a family of Cherokee Indians. We stopped there to camp and I rushed to do some exploring.

Keowee River, ca. 1936

You would think December an odd time of year to go botanizing in the Southern Appalachians, but Michaux was here for more than watching wildflowers bloom. He was collecting plants to send back to France. Since he had already scouted the area in the summer of 1787, his winter visit was an opportunity to gather seeds and roots for propagation.

[To be continued]

"reckon up all the names of these wild apples"

 [From October 18, 2008]

So as I say poetry is essentially the discovery, the love, the passion for the name of anything. – Gertrude Stein



The odd perversity of human nature. How else can you explain it? The fruit associated with our expulsion from Paradise is the fruit we hold in highest regard.

The forbidden fruit,
The golden apples,
The apple of discord,
Adam’s Apple,
William Tell’s apple,
Isaac Newton’s apple,
Johnny Appleseed’s apple,
Apple of my eye,
Apple a day,
Baseball hot dogs apple pie and Chevrolet,
An apple for the teacher,
The Big Apple
And one bad apple.
How ‘bout them apples?

On a brisk October afternoon in the 1850s Silas McDowell wandered the Cullasaja Valley searching for wild apples. On that same afternoon, hundreds of miles to the north, Henry David Thoreau set out from Concord searching for wild apples. Silas left us the Nickajack, the Alarkee, the Equinetely, the Cullawhee, the Junaluskee, the Watauga, the Tillequah and the Chestooah. Henry left us a treatise on Wild Apples in which he contemplated the naming of them.



Oh, the delights of pomaceous nomenclature! When enthobotanist Gary Nabhan visited Highlands recently, he spoke of the many varieties of apples originating from the Southern Appalachians:

I think the names of these apples are interesting because some of the varieties go by multiple names. The Nickajack apple that was first promoted in Franklin was also known as Carolina Spice, Spotted Buck, Colonel Summerhour and World’s Wonder. What a great name for an apple – World’s Wonder. You have things like Hubberson’s Nonesuch and Seek-No-Further. Just park yourself under that tree and wait for them to fall into your lap! That’s about the highest compliment you can give another species. Seek No Further!




When apple breeders breed apples they must eventually name those apples. That was the challenge facing some Minnesota apple breeders after they crossed a Gala with a Braeburn:

We put a very scientific 'keep an eye on this one' note on the Sugar Shack tree. Of course, we hadn't named it yet, and we are the type of people who would name an apple 'Keep An Eye On This One,' but we later thought 'Sugar Shack' was a better name. The guys who named the apple variety 'Westfield Seek-no-further' in Connecticut 'way back in the mid-1700's didn't do too bad with a novel name, though. Antique apple collectors are still growing the variety, and the intriguing name certainly has something to do with that. We could name an apple 'Minnesota Never-stop-growing-this-one' and then hang around a few hundred years and see if it worked. It's worth a shot.



Some UK orchardists consider how the naming of apples has become yet another corporate enterprise in this fallen world:

Part of the appeal of the old heritage apple varieties is their good honest names. In the "good old days" apples were named without fuss. A common strategy was the name of the person who discovered them - Pott’s Seedling, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Kidd’s Orange Red, Granny Smith, Chivers Delight and so on. If that didn’t have quite the right ring to it, the name of the local village might suffice: Ribston Pippin, Barnack Beauty, Allington Pippin, Braeburn. Another popular strategy was to borrow the name of a famous person such as Lord Lambourne, Freyberg, Bismarck for example. If you were stuck (or not very inventive) you just went for something really simple like Red Delicious or Golden Delicious. In the 21st century however the important job of naming (or branding) new apple varieties is no longer left to the happy grower, but has been taken over by marketing departments, who see apples as just another consumer item, and might as well be naming a new car as a new apple. Thus we have Kanzi, a brand new 21st century apple, which means "hidden treasure" in Swahili - of course.

For the last word on this subject, I’ll yield to Henry David Thoreau for a passage from Wild Apples:

The Naming of Them

[73] It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable names for the hundred varieties which go to a single heap at the cider-mill. Would it not tax a man's invention,--no one to be named after a man, and all in the lingua vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were used, and make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid.

[74] In 1836 there were in the garden of the London Horticultural Society more than fourteen hundred distinct sorts. But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which our Crab might yield to cultivation.

[75] Let us enumerate a few of these. I find myself compelled, after all, to give the Latin names of some for the benefit of those who live where English is not spoken,--for they are likely to have a world-wide reputation.

[76] There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis), also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant's Apple, (Cessatoris), which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer's Apple,--you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple, possibly the same with the Musketaquidensis; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (Malus viridis);--this has many synonyms; in an imperfect state, it is the Cholera morbifera aut dysenterifera, puerulis dilectissima;--the Apple which Atalanta stopped to pick up; the Hedge-Apple (Malus Sepium); the Slug-Apple (limacea); the Railroad-Apple, which perhaps came from a core thrown out of the cars; the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth; our Particular Apple, not to be found in any catalogue,--Pedestrium Solatium; also the Apple where hangs the Forgotten Scythe; Iduna's Apples, and the Apples which Loki found in the Wood; and a great many more I have on my list, too numerous to mention,--all of them good. As Bodæus exclaims, referring to the cultivated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so I, adapting Bodæus,--

"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."

Under the Hiccory Tree

[From October 3, 2010]

If we had lived here during the hunter-gatherer days, then we would have been paying closer attention.

I’ve been thinking about this while taking short strolls on the mountain where I live.



At the very top is a secluded spot where I go to sit and listen sometimes. A large hickory tree stands tall there, and this weekend, I collected a few hickory nuts that had fallen from the tree. Hickory nuts have a delicious flavor.  However, the tiny nutmeat morsels hide inside stubborn shells.

If we had lived here during the hunter-gatherer days, then we would have known where all the productive hickory trees stood and visited them often, to get there before the small animals building their winter stores.

And we would have likely spent hours cracking out enough hickory nuts to amount to a handful.

When he traveled upriver from present-day Augusta, Georgia on his trip through the Southeast, William Bartram observed the Creeks processing great quantities of hickory nuts:

We then passed over large, rich savannas, or natural meadows, wide-spreading cane swamps, and frequently old Indian settlements, now deserted and overgrown with forests. These are always on or near the banks of rivers, or great swamps, the artificial mounts and terraces elevating them above the surrounding groves. I observed in the ancient cultivated fields:

1. Diospyros; [Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana]
2. Gleditsia triacanthos; [Honey Locust]
3. Prunus chicasau; [Chickasaw Plum, Prunus angustifolia]
4. Callicarpa; [French Mulberry, Callicarpa americana]
5. Moras rubra; [Red Mulberry, Morus rubra]
6. Juglans exaltata; [Shell-barked Hickory]
7. Juglans nigra, [Black walnut]

which inform us that these trees were cultivated by the ancients on account of their fruit as being wholesome and nourishing food. Though these are natives of the forest, yet they thrive better, and are more fruitful in cultivated plantations, and the fruit is in great estimation with the present generation of Indians, particularly Juglans exaltata, commonly called shell-barked hiccory. The Creeks store up the last in their towns. I have seen above an hundred bushels of these nuts belonging to one family. They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid; this, they call by a name which signifies hiccory milk; it is as sweet and rich as fresh cream, and is an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially homony and corn cakes.

In his 1873 book, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Charles Colcock Jones described the stone implements used to crack hickories and other nuts:

We have thus, at some length, referred to the use of nuts as an article of food among the Southern Indians, because we hence derive the meaning and employment of these cup-shaped cavities. In our judgment these relics are simply the stones upon which the Indians cracked their nuts. Their cavities are so located that one, two, three, four, five, and sometimes more nuts could be cracked at a single blow delivered by means of the circular, flat crushing-stone so common, and so often found in direct connection with the rude articles now under consideration.

The cups are just large enough to hold a hickory-nut or a walnut in proper position so that, when struck, its pieces would be prevented from being widely scattered. Particularly do the soap-stones indicate the impressions left by the convex surfaces of the harder nuts. Upon some of them the depressions seem to have been caused simply by repeatedly cracking the nuts upon the same spot so that in time a concavity was produced corresponding to the half of the spherical or spheroidal nut. Such is the most natural explanation we can offer with regard to the use of these stones.

Beware the Bitter Buffalo Nut

I saw a small patch of these just the other day...

[From August 14, 2008]

While hiking recently near the Chattooga River and again at Panthertown Valley, I saw a large shrub that would have been inconspicuous except for the many pear-shaped fruits hanging from its limbs. To be more accurate, I’d say the fruits bore a resemblance to green figs in size and shape, though I knew they weren’t figs. This was one I didn’t recognize and my plant books weren’t much help. But a plant-savvy friend advised me it was a buffalo nut (Pyrularia pubera).

I’m glad that I had resisted the temptation to pick one of the fruits and bite into it. The buffalo nut is a poisonous plant, toxic when taken in large quantities, though just tasting the seed causes severe irritation of the mouth. Early colonists observed the bison and elk (then present in the Eastern woodlands) eating the fruits in winter, hence the common names buffalo nut or elk nut were applied to the plant. Other names included oil nut, mother-in-law nut, rabbitwood, mountain coconut, crazy nut, and Cherokee salve. The nut is actually a brown marble-sized nut inside the green pear-shaped drupe.

George Ellison has written a detailed natural history of the buffalo nut, with references to the early botanists' investigations of the plant. The Cherokees used the plant to make a salve for treating sores. An oil extracted from the nut was a potential source of lamp oil.

Growing at scattered sites throughout the Southern Appalachians, the buffalo nut is a member of the sandalwood family, and like many plants in that family is a parasite. The roots of the buffalo nut latch on to a host plant and obtain nutrients and water from the root system of the host. The buffalo nut can parasitize a great number of native tree species. In particular, it has been associated with a tree that has disappeared from our forests, the chestnut, and another tree that is rapidly disappearing, the hemlock. But given its ability to thrive as a parasite, it will likely continue to hold a place in the understory of old disturbed forest sites throughout the Appalachians…

…pretty to look at, but not something you’d want to taste.

Woodland Mysteries

 [From August 25, 2010]

A walk through the woods this time of year yields some interesting sights.



For instance, this fungus on a tree trunk resembles wet noodles…or mucous membrane.

I wish I could tell you what it is.

One pretty, but rather unassuming, wildflower from this past weekend also has me mystified. The feature that caught my attention was the spiral arrangement of the blooms running up the stem.

You might not know this, but in the Northern Hemisphere, such blooms always run in a clockwise pattern. If you go wildflowering south of the equator, however, you’ll see that any spiral of blooms runs in a counter-clockwise pattern.

Amazing, eh?

But back to the weekend mystery flower. I’ve decided that it is some type of goldenrod (Solidago genus). It is not what I picture when I think of goldenrod. Here's the typical goldenrod:

This large specimen from my pasture is the Common Goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis). Or at least I think it is. Upon researching the possible identity of my spiraling goldenrod, a much smaller plant, I considered and then ruled out some possibilities like the Roan Mountain Goldenrod (S. roanensis) and the Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (S. caesia).

At times like this, I really need to move beyond the wildflower guides and start using a key to help with identification. Maybe next year.

By the way, I was only joking about the clockwise and counter-clockwise arrangement of blooms…in a lame attempt at some wildflower humor. On this subject, I did find a reference to an article by H. A. Allard, The Ratios of Clockwise and Counterclockwise Spirality Observed in the Phyllotaxy of Some Wild Plants, (Castanea, The Journal of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Club, March 1951). http://www.jstor.org/pss/4031467

That’s certainly one citation to add to my library list and perhaps I’ll pick up a copy of the article this week. Comparing Allard’s information with some of my texts on sacred geometry sounds like an evening’s entertainment to me.

Concerning the spiral goldenrod, I felt a little better about my trouble identifying the plant after finding this note in Gray's Manual of Botany:

Solidago is one of our most difficult genera. Natural hybridization frequently occurs. For proper study, full specimens, showing subterranean parts and basal leaves as well as the whole flowering stem, are essential.

.

Paradise Gardens

Talk about convergences!  Earlier this month, I posted a story with a brief mention of Joe Hollis.  Around the same time, I was feasting on a series of videos produced by Peter Santenello, the best documentaries I've seen online (or anywhere else) in a long time.  Peter's profile of "Titus" is splendid.  Then, just this week I heard about a viral video pertaining to a man with a garden in Yancey County, North Carolina.  I guessed that Peter had caught up with Joe Hollis, and I was correct.  Thirteen years ago, I spent some time at Joe's and shared this story...

[From August 22, 2010]

If you ever have the good fortune to sit down with Joe Hollis, he might explain that the molecules of hemoglobin and chlorophyll share an uncanny similarity. Look around his place and you’ll see that Joe has found a thousand ways to honor the connection between plants and people suggested by that bit of biochemical lore.



Forty years ago, Joe Hollis moved off the grid and onto two acres of land bordering the Pisgah National Forest, where he started building a collection of useful plants. He didn’t stop with common plants or plants native to this area, but sought plants from similar habitats on other continents.

The closest analog to the botanical diversity of the Southern Appalachians is found in the mountains of China. The plants growing in a Smokies cove are mirrored by plants of the same genus, if not the same species, in a Chinese mountain cove:

Over 50 such genera of plants include magnolias, hickory, sassafras, ginseng, mayapple, skunk cabbage, several orchids, jack-in-the-pulpit, coffee-tree, stewartia, witch hazel, dogwoods, persimmons, hollies, sumacs, maples, and yellowood. Several animal taxa also show unique affinities with East Asian relatives, including copperheads (Agkistrodon spp.), hellbender salamanders (Cryptobranchidae family), some land snails, and paddlefish (Polyodon spathula).
[Source - http://www.eoearth.org/article/Appalachian-Blue_Ridge_forests]

In the course of gathering useful plants from around the world, Hollis put together what may be the richest collection of Chinese medicinal plants growing in the United States. On my quick tour of his gardens, I saw flowers and plants I’ve never seen and might never see again. He doesn’t merely grow the plants but has assembled a significant research library of books on the subject and has processed the plants into tinctures and dried form. For a small fee, anyone can pick and choose from the neatly arranged shelves of natural medicines grown onsite to fill a customized prescription of botanical remedies.

Interns initiate and carry out many projects at the gardens, including the construction of yurts and graceful earth-sheltered cob dwellings fashioned from little more than sticks and mud. Some might say Joe Hollis lives in the past. I would say he is a pioneer of our future.

But enough of that. Here’s more from Joe, in his own words:

Although I am always up for 'reasoning together', because only upon the bedrock of a solid understanding of where we're at will we be able to build a new world (the Greeks called this ataraxy), my real purpose here is to reach out to like-minds and reason together how to get out of this mess.

Because we are all part of the cancer.

We were born into it, it is our world, even more real to us than the real world Gaia. For all of us, 'making a living' means 'making money' - and money is the life blood of the cancer. We turn to nature for beauty, inspiration, solace; but our life support system is civilization, the State/Economy, which grows by eating away and poisoning Gaia. To recognize this is one thing (actually, a very big thing), but it's not the answer; it's just accurately defining the problem.

All we can do is walk away from it, which means, at the simplest and most obvious level, making less money every year. Without being any less (actually, in my experience more) happy and healthy. This is accomplished by fulfilling the needs formerly satisfied with money directly from the earth, like every other living creature. This activity, properly conceived, I call Paradise Gardening. In the world which I imagine, each family or, better, band, or even small village, would be the nucleus of a Paradise Garden cell.

I believe we are right now at a point where we change - or bust. We began as hunter-gatherers, from which happy and healthy state we were shanghaied by greedy men ("Civilization begins in conquest and continues in repression" - until by now most have no idea how repressed they are). Since then we have come a long way and done a lot of damage - to Gaia, to each other, to ourselves. New York City perhaps approaches in complexity the disappearing Amazon rain forest. But at least some of us have learned a lot from our mistakes.

So now, or never, the next step in human evolution, the New Age. Hunter-gatherer (who we really are) plus what we have learned from Civilization generates Paradise. The gradual development of a Paradise cell around you equals your gradual withdrawal from the cancer. I'm not talking about a way to live on earth, I'm talking about the way to live on earth, the way that is in our bones and genes: occupying our rightful and ordained niche. Of course these Paradise cells will be all different, varying with bioregions and topography and personal proclivities. What they will share is richness of diversity and fertility.

This, at the simplest and most obvious level, is the 'purpose' of Gaia: ever increasing diversity and inter-connectedness, an ever denser web of life woven around the planet. (Of course there are many other levels on which to consider the 'purpose' of Gaia, and of humans within her, and in the future which I imagine many of us would devote much of our abundant 'leisure time' to such considerations, and to practices opening ourselves to conscious communication with Gaia, but right this minute the house is on fire.) We must walk - don't run - away. Calmly, considerately, and immediately, we must begin to walk away.

We must begin to get and spend less (it wastes our powers anyway) and enjoy life more.