When my grandmother would take us cousins on walks through the woods, there were 3 plants she seemed to be particularly interested in---sassafras, ginseng, and mayapple. I gathered that the last 2 were fairly rare, because she would get excited when she found one of those. My grandfather would go out looking for ginseng roots to dig up (at least that's what he said he was doing). I don't remember ever seeing any.
Mayapple, Mandrake Mayapple, Mandrake, fruit edible when totally ripe, toxic otherwise. Ripe Mayapple
An old picture I found on the internet. I think I posted it before. Near Glenmont, OH, a tiny town about 2 miles from the woods we walked. What caught my eye was the mayapple plants in the right foreground.
I made sassafras tea as in @Nancy Hart's first video, but I never reused the roots. I have placed with cooking things with rocks as in @Joe Riley's video, but never made sassafras tea that way. We played with mayapples, but I don't recall ever eating any, as we believed them to be toxic, and I didn't encounter Ginseng until moving to the North Carolina mountains, where ginseng and ramps were big springtime delicacies.
The Dangers Of Sassafras "Among one of the biggest potential pitfalls of sassafras is its reported link with cancer. The FDA banned sassafras use in 1979 following research that showed it caused cancer in rats. "While the amount of sassafras that could potentially cause cancer in humans remains unknown, one cup of strong sassafras tea is reported to contain as much as 200 mg of safrole, an amount that is four times higher than the amount considered potentially hazardous to humans if consumed regularly," claims Blue Shield."
The Difference Between Root Beer and Sarsaparilla Root beer and sarsaparilla are two beverages produced originally by the Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. Both were introduced as tonics considering their medicinal properties. Root Beer Initially....root beer evolved from a mixture of birch oil and the dried root or bark of the sassafras tree. Modern root beers do not include sassafras due to its potential health hazards. Charles Elmer Hires introduced the first commercial brand of root beer in the year 1875. Though he wanted to name the product “root tea,” he branded it as “root beer” to sell it among the coal miners of Pennsylvania. Sarsaparilla Sarsaparilla is a soft drink primarily made from the root of “Smilax ornata” (sarsaparilla) root.
From what I can see a double-runner is also called a bob-sled, and the difference is that the front runners are separate, so that they can make a turn easier. Here is a picture to give you an idea of how this works, and it is similar to how our old-fashioned kids bob-sleds were made; and we steered with our hands if we were laying down on the sled, and with our feet when we were sitting up on it.
This afternoon, when I was out working in the yard and garden, I decided to bring in some sassafras leaves and dehydrate them to make some file (fee-lay) for gumbo this winter. There were a couple of young trees that had come up along side of where my little garden is at, so I pruned them back and then brought them inside and snipped off all of the leaves. I have them drying, and when they are nice and dry, them I buzz them a little bit in the blender, which powders them up nice. Then I can just put them in a jar and save them for when we want to use some for soup. Bobby makes gumbo sometimes in the winter, and i think that the file can also be used in other soups. A sassafras leaf can be plain or have 2-3 “mitten fingers” , and they are all on the same tree. Here is a picture of what sassafras leaves look like. You can see the different shapes of the leaves.
And the best thing is the bright red color they turn in the fall. In Georgia there are very few trees that turn red. Most are yellow.
Can/do you make tea from the dried leaves? Most of the sassafras trees here were decimated by the goats. When they sprout back up again from the roots, I will try gathering and drying some leaves, if I can find some.