Some friends, aware that I liked sassafras tea, brought me some sassafras root one recent day. It was probably two feet long with a large amount of bark still attached, and even at the rate that I can go through tea, I wasn’t sure what I could do with all of that sassafras.
I called Blackwater resident Vickie Shufer, a naturalist and owner of Wild Woods Farm Native Nursery, to ask if sassafras could be used as a seasoning in cooked foods. The leaves, she said, were a key ingredient of filé gumbo, and while Cajuns traditionally gathered their own, it was now crushed and sold commercially as filé powder.
Sassafras root is also used to make homemade root beer, but I have no time to brew root beer and no leaves with which to make filé powder. Not to worry, Shufer said, the dried root would keep for a very long time, so I’d have lots of time for tea-making.
The plant’s bark and roots can be burned as an insect repellent, and the woody stem can also be burned in the fireplace to add fragrance, Shufer said.
The sassafras tree, sometimes called the “mitten tree” because of its mitten-shaped leaves, grows abundantly in eastern Virginia, and Virginians have found many and varied uses for it for centuries.
Native Virginians and the early Colonists believed strongly in the plant’s medicinal properties and drank tea made from the roots as a spring tonic to cleanse away impurities and prepare them for the upcoming growing season.
“They maybe hadn’t moved around too much during the cold months, and they thought that they needed to get the sludge out of their systems so that they would have a lot of energy,” Shufer said.
The Colonists also drank the tea as a substitute for commercially produced tea, particularly during the Revolutionary War. The flowers, which are somewhat spicy, can also be used in salads.
These days, though, people are more likely to value sassafras because, as a relative of spicebush, it serves as a host plant for swallowtail butterflies.
It’s also a hardy grower in this area. The Department of Horticulture at Virginia Tech recommends it for acidic soils, which are common in Virginia Beach.
In forested areas, the sassafras tree generally grows as an understory tree, although it can become very tall, Shufer said. It can also grow as a bush, and it tends to put out root suckers, so in the wild it’s not unusual to see several growing in one spot.
Shufer grows sassafras trees at her nursery and markets them at New Earth Farm. She’ll also have some available for sale at the Virginia Native Plant Society’s annual sale; this year it’s from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 7 at the Francis Land House, located at 3131 Virginia Beach Blvd.
For more information about the offerings at Wild Wood Farms Native Nursery, visit http://www.ecoimages-us.com/nursery/.
?Jane Bloodworth Rowe, jrowe28@cox.net
