Polar Bear, Polar Bear
Your ice is melting all around you.
What will you do?
Polar Bear, Polar Bear,
Can you find a strong ice patch
To sit upon while you eat your catch?
Polar Bear, Polar Bear,
Without that tasty seal for dinner
You will get thinner and thinner.
Polar Bear, Polar Bear
You are the biggest bear of all
We must listen to your call.
The role of sassafras for Americans, and subsequently, Europeans is a story worth telling. The Spanish discovered the tree in the 1500’s and began shipping it to Europe. Some believe they also named the tree. However, sassafras is the Indian word for tree so there is some doubt. Moreover, sassafras, one of the top 100 common trees in American, was important to many tribes. The Choctaw Indians along the Gulf Coast taught the French how to make “file.” These ground sassafras leaves will thicken soup. Many other native Americans used the sassafras tree, including the Cherokee, Chippewa, Choctaw, Creek, Delaware, Oklahoma, Houma, Iroquois, Kosati, Mohegan, Nanticoke, Rappahannock, Seminole.
There is no question that when the Spanish exported this strong citrus root and leaves to Europe they started a health craze equal to any we see today. The Europeans considered it an elixir for rheumatism, wounds and even, old age. If you were to dig up the root and peel back the bark, the spicy smell will immediately remind you of root beer because the root of this tree is used to make this soda. Some tea drinkers enjoy the root's taste regardless of its medicinal benefit. Others use the root to make brown dye.
By the way, I would like identify the other 99 most common trees in America? Any ideas?
The best thing about nature reading is making the discovery in real life. This happened to me today. Lately I have been learning more about the sassafras tree. Now I know there are those of you who think my discovery is akin to a toddler picking up a stick. When I spotted the very identifiable three-lobed leaf, I picked and crushed it ,enjoying its lemony scent... nature’s magic. I cannot wait to share this moment with my granddaughter. Still excited about my discovery, I set out on a more thorough internet search. One of first bits of information I learned, as I usually do on these journeys, is that I am not the first to investigate the sassafras story. And, in this case, our country’s early history is very closely connected to the sassafras tree. Another blogger explained what I thought I saw today-very different leaf shapes on the same tree- but dismissed as impossible.
Another interesting fact is that Amazon lists over 100 books with "sassafras" in the title. Of course, there is Sassafras the elephant, caterpillar, poodle, or skunk. I guess the repeating s's attract attention. But the tree received a lot more attention as a medicinal cure. More on the sassafras story tomorrow.
Where have all the codfish gone,
Asked the hungry seal to the polar bear?
Where have the codfish gone,
Asked the salmon to the narwhal?
Where have all the codfish gone,
Asked the ivory gull to all his Arctic friends?
The codfish asked
Where have all my plants and plankton gone?
Melted away. Melted away, sighed the little boy
Sitting in the sun.
Let us work towards keeping this environmental nursery rhyme a tale, not a truth.
The etymology of Yellow toadflax begins with it older and more useful cousin. Although Yellow Toadflax has been in North America for the last 300 years old, compared to its namesake, flax, it is still a youngster. Flax was one of the first crops cultivated by civilized man. Therefore some suggest it was native to the Orient and then traveled south to India and north to Europe. The Swiss Stone Age People of the Mediterranean used the fiber and the seed. The Egyptians wrapped their mummies in linen woven from flax fibers.
Now no one denies the connection between the true flax and its weedy cousin. Many of these weedy species of Linaria look very much like flax. However, this link makes tracing the “toad” in toadflax somewhat unclear. Some say that toadflax got its name because the word “toad” was a spurious, or counterfeit, of the origin plant. Considering the plethora of common names gives to yellow toadflax, this seems plausible. Common names often take on the observer sees. Some see a cow’s nose, or Calves Snout, in the orange lobes. Others suggest that the plants structure (the two orange lobes) resemble a toad’s mouth. A third theory is that toads were often found hiding among the leaves. The butter & egg, or wild snapdragon, is one of 130 species of Linnaria, native to Eurasia.
Yellow Toadflax, or butter and eggs, part of the figwort or snapdragon family, is a plant with delicate orange lobes similar to a pair of lips, sitting on top of a yellow spur. It is not surprising that this profile earned it a generic name that means dragon mouth because like other flowers that are squeezed open their "mouth." Children also enjoy playing with these lips. Squeezing the side of the flower makes the mouth open and then snap shut. When the bumblebees pollinates the snapdragon, its ungratefully close over the pollinator who is dispositing his pollen
Because of this resemblance to the showy snapdragon, in the mid 1800's a Welsh Quaker, traveling with William Penn to Delaware started cultivating it in his garden. Ranstead, an upholster by trade, who probably had an appreciation for design, brought this Ranstead Weed, or yellow toadflax, to America, was unconcerned about it escaping the garden.
Some may recognize it by one of its many alias; wild snapdragon, Ramstead Weed, Flaxweed, Jacob’s Ladder, Brideweed, , Buttered Hayhocks, Calves' Snout, Churnstaff, Devil's Head, Devil's Ribbon, Doggies, Dragon-Bushes, Eggs and Bacon, Eggs and Collops, Flaxweed, Fluelli, Gallwort, Larkspur Lion's Mouth, Linaria vulgaris, Monkey Flower, Pattens and Clogs, Pedlar's Basket, Pennywort, Rabbits, Toadpipe, Yellow Rod.
The yellow toadflax with round shaped leaves grows in sandy soil: Whereas the spiked leaf yellow toadflax likes to creep extensively and spread its roots in a gravelly base. It is this ability to root so easily that has allowed it to spread to every state. It was introduced in California in the 1800’s. North Dakota has an all-out bulletin on a website that personifies this gorgeous weed. “If you find this weed, report it to your local weed officer.
HELP STOP THE SPREAD” Along with its decorative yellow cornucopia, or “butter”, holding the orange, “egg” which first attracts the gardener to its beauty. Colorado and Idaho are among the many states listing it as a noxious weed. “The weeds contain a poisonous glucoside that may be harmful to livestock.” British Columbia uses biological agents to control it.
Flower By Flower
Think about the names of wildflowers (even those we consider weeds) you have learned over the years. How many would you guess you know? 10? 20? Why are some so familiar, and others, visually recognizable, but name unknown. The buttercup, for instance, has been put under millions of tiny chins to check for the victim’s love of butter. The daisy has had its petals pulled one by one only to break the heart of the person holding the lone petal that “loves me not.” For each of us, there is that memory that forever holds the name of the flower in our hearts. One puff on the dandelion –endears the child to its magic explosion.
But there are so many more that go nameless. One look at a botanical website listing the wildflowers for each state will make it painfully clear how many we are missing.
The best way to approach this for child or adult is to focus on one flower and learn all there is to know about it. Looking around, yellow dots the Connecticut roadsides this month. I plan on learning about each yellow wildflower, flower by flower. Won’t you join me?
Read More About It:
A Little Guide to Wild Flowers, by Charlotte Voake, April, 2007; Transworld Publishers.
