Mountain Folk Remedies: The Foxfire Americana Library (9) Read Online Free

well in shady, moist, wooded areas. It has smooth leaves that can be six inches long and three inches wide. The flower, which appears from April to early July, is shaped much like a calla lily and is green or green with eggplant-colored stripes. Fall brings a cluster of shiny deep red berries. The root (or corm) is turnip-shaped and has a strong burning taste. This plant is gathered in the summer for the root. The root is cut crosswise and dried to lessen the strong taste. Native Americans used the dried root for colds and coughs and to build the blood. Dried root poultices were used externally for rheumatism, boils, and swelling from snakebites.
    Jerusalem Oak Seed
(Chenopodium anthelminticum)
is a naturalized, strongly-odored weed that grows in open places and is gathered for using either the entire plant or the fruit only. It is a common plant. It has a stem of two to three feet with many branches and several lance-shaped leaves. The lower leaves are much larger than the upper leaves. In summer, flower spikes mixed with leaves appear. These are followedby small round berries that contain a small black seed. The strong odor comes from the potent oil contained in the plant. This oil is distilled from the berries alone or from the entire plant.
    Gertrude Mull told a story about using this plant. “One time, my brother got sick. Just looked like he had the nervous croup [not real croup, but the symptoms are similar]. We called the doctor, and the doctor gave him shots for the nervous croup, but [it turned out] he didn’t have it. There was an old neighbor woman come, and she said, ‘I believe he’s wormy.’ So she went out and got some peach tree bark and leaves and poured boiling water over that and made a poultice. She put that right across his belly. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘go to the store and bring some of this Jerusalem oak seed medicine, and we’ll try that on him.’
    “The doctor said he was too weak to do that. He said, ‘Maybe you’d better wait.’
    “That woman said, ‘I’m gonna put this poultice on him, and I’m going to the store and bring a bottle of worm medicine up here to give him.’ She went up there [and got the medicine]. She give him a dose of that and told my mother, “Tomorrow, you give him another’un. And you give him some castor oil after that and see.”
    “So she did, and they got sixty-some big round worms out of that little-bitty boy. He was only about three or four years old. And that boy got well. He always was a little ol’ weaselly-looking thing, and he seemed like he come out then [started growing].
    “From then on, she always give us kids that medicine about twice a year. She got worms from some of ’em but never did get none from me. I’d take it, but boy! I’d go through that stuff. Nobody knows. [Mama would make us] candy out of syrup and that Jerusalem oak seed. Boil the syrup, put a little sodie in it, and stir it. Cook it just like candy. Twist it just like tobacco. Then she’d break that all up in big pieces and pass it around for us to eat. We’d eat it that a-way. And you can feed that to your chickens or anything that’d get worms.”
    Jewelweed
(Impatiens capensis)
grows well in wet places where shade is abundant. Stems are brown, can reach two feet tall, and hold variably sized, soft-green leaves. Charles Thurmond said, “Jewelweed grows all around the Foxfire office in Mountain City. The juice inside the jewel-weed is a natural cortisone that is good for bee stings, poison oak, and poison ivy.”
    I LLUSTRATION 13 Joe-Pye Weed
    Joe-Pye Weed
(Eupatorium maculatum)
may grow as tall as six feet. Its cluster of several small pink flowers is slightly fragrant. Although there are several stories as to who Joe Pye really was, there is a general consensusthat he was an Abenaki Indian medicine man who lived in colonial New England. He earned his fame by “curing” typhoid fever and several other diseases by using concoctions made from this plant. In the