sassafras

[prettygoodword]

sassafras (SAS-uh-fras) - n., an American tree (Sassafras albidum) with irregularly lobate leaves and aromatic leaves, bark, and roots; the bark of the root of this plant, used medicinally and formerly as a flavoring.


Specifically, it's the root of root beer. Formerly, because it is banned in the United States (and elsewhere?) as a suspected carcinogen, which means it's impossible to buy real root beer commercially -- you can still make it yourself, if you live in the eastern United States or Canada (or someplace it's been imported to). Irregularly lobate because any given leaf can have two, one, or no lobes, even on a given plant:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

The name is, interestingly, from Spanish sasafrás (or possibly French sassafras), both from Late Latin saxifragia, stone-breaker, apparently from some trees growing through cracks in a boulder (they'll grow just about anywhere), which makes it a cognate of the herb saxifrage.

For the record, the leaf buds are as yummy as actual root beer.

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

Also the defining ingredient of sarsaparilla, that favorite beverage of old-time movie cowboys (at least the Lawful Good Hays Code-abiding sort)—and, ironically, just about extinct in the U.S., although it’s popular in much of Asia and the Caribbean and remains a thing in parts of the U.K.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarsaparilla_(soft_drink)

[prettygoodword]

I had always assumed that sarsaparilla was made from the plant of the same name. Huh! TIL something.

[full_metal_ox]

See also Post Grape-Nuts, city chicken (also known as Cincinnati Chicken where I grew up), and egg cream.

(It’s fairly common knowledge that Coca-Cola no longer contains the ingredients the name implies, although that was originally the case.)

[prettygoodword]

I knew about those. (This summer, during a stop in NYC, we got to introduce da kid to egg creams with the lure that there's neither egg nor cream in it ... )

Took a while to dig it up…

[full_metal_ox]

…but your entry brought to mind the May 1975 Reader’s Digest article “Just Call Me Pathfinder”, Will Stanton’s account of chaperoning some kids on a YMCA camping trip:

Back to camp. Cot looked beautiful. Kids wanted to hike. Okay. Sonny Rundy’s father our leader. Pointed out white pine, bird’s-eye maple, sassafras. Said Indians made sassafras tea. Kids wanted to make some. Okay with me. Collected half-bushel of roots. Told them enough, Sonny Sr., very concerned. Illegal to take plants from state park. Better throw away before park cops saw me. Hesitated. Could see headlines - LOCAL MAN CHARGED WITH UNLAWFUL POSSESSION OF SASSAFRAS.

Boys asked if I was going to throw it away. Said certainly not. Indians didn’t believe in wasting sassafras. Neither did I.

That evening, camp smelled like sassafras growers’ convention. After Rundy’s carrying on, boys had idea that sassafras tea was somehow illegal. Worked like beavers chopping wood and building fire, so our tea would be darker, thicker and more potent that the next cabin’s. Took home canteen full – looked like molasses. Tasted like something Frankenstein might serve Dracula. If not illegal, should have been.

Full article linked here: https://archive.ph/nHIvt

Re: Took a while to dig it up…

[prettygoodword]

That sounds WAY thicker/stronger than we ever brewed, in the way of tea. It's a potent aromatic, and it sounds like much like rose oil, a little goes a long way.