BJ Price
Last week as I was mowing hay, I passed our little grove of sassafras trees at the end of a fencerow, tucked under some silver maples. Although my wife may give me a hard time for not being able to multi-task, I was able to mow hay and conjure up old memories all at the same time.
My earliest memory of sassafras tea was at summer camp more than three decades ago. The camp I attended was on the edge of the Appalachian plateau near Peebles in Adams County where the undergrowth of the woods was full of sassafras trees. Another family group of campers found an old coffee can and even today I can still see the sassafras roots they had steeping in water in the coffee can over their fire.
Soon after we learned how to identify stinging caterpillars and black widow spiders at camp, we were given our short course in sassafras identification. Anyone with functioning nostrils could easily recognize a sassafras tree by its smell when the leaves were crushed. In addition, we learned the three different leaf shapes found on sassafras: the fork, spoon, and mitten. Botanists have a word for this: heterophylly, meaning multiple leaf shapes on one plant.
According to Peattie in A Natural History of Trees, sassafras trees can grow up to 80 feet tall in the south, but as one moves farther north, the sassafras trees decrease in size to something more like small trees until finally becoming shrub-like on the Lake Michigan dunes in Indiana.
Years ago, tea made from sassafras root bark could be easily purchased. To clarify, Webster says root bark is just that: the tough exterior covering of a woody root. A while back I had a notion to buy some and I was surprised that it could not be found in the grocery store. Thinking that maybe I was barking up the wrong tree, I searched online and found that it is still available but it comes with a hefty price tag in many cases.
Sassafras is taken as a spring tonic and has been used in folk medicine for ages. It contains safrole, a chemical compound in sassafras oil that is reportedly toxic to humans. Apparently, multiple studies conducted on mice show that safrole induces liver cancer and tumor growth. The studies didn’t say whether the mice took it only for a spring tonic or if they were made to consume obscene amounts of it. A better explanation for its scarcity on shelves might be that safrole is used to make a compound known as isosafrole which is then used to produce illegal drugs like MDMA. I’m no drug expert, but the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informs me that MDMA is a party drug that can really mess with your mind.
I have no interest in the crazy things that the DEA says people make out of compounds isolated from sassafras, but I would like some sassafras tea. I can’t find sassafras root in the grocery store and I’m not so sure about some of the online sellers. I think I’ll head to the fencerow with my shovel and dig my own.
Reach BJ Price at 937-456-5159 for more information.
