Medicinal Monday - Sassafras

Sassafras is such a whimsical name for a small deciduous tree that is native to Eastern North America. Native Americans used sassafras wood for dugout canoes and used its leaves, roots, and bark medicinally.

About Sassafras

This small but sturdy tree that grows between 18 and 20 feet in height with a truck that ranges from one to two feet in diameter in the northern range. In the southern range of her growth area, a sassafras tree can grow up to 100 feet high.  One unusual feature among several in regard to this tree is that it has three distinct leaf patterns on the same tree: unlobed oval, bilobed that resemble a mitten shape and trilobed or three-pronged leaves. The entire tree gives off a scent, young leaves produce a citrus-like scent when crushed. The tree produces tiny yellow flowers and the fruit of this tree is a stone fruit (similar to a peach or berry) that is blue-black when ripe.

Another interesting feature of the sassafras tree is that it reproduces through cloning through its root system. The "mother" tree sends off rootlets that grow into new trees that live off the nutrients of the mother tree until it can reach light and reach into the canopy.  The sassafras tree loves the sun and is often found on the edge of the forest.

Medicinal Uses of Sassafras 

Cherokees gave an infusion of sassafras bark to treat their children for worms and used a sassafras poultice made from roots and bark to treat open wounds and sores, they even applied sassafras infused water to treat sore eyes. The Chippewas/Ojibwes used the root bark as a blood thinner, the Choctaw used a decoction of roots to treat measles and the Houmas used the roots to treat scarlet fever.  The Iroquois soaked sassafrass roots in whiskey to treat tapeworms.  The Koasatis used a poultice of sassafrass to treat bee stings and the Rappahannock used raw buds of the tree to increase vigor in men.

The Mohegan used an infusion of young shoots as an eyewash and they also used a compound infusion including sassafrass root as a spring tonic. The Seminole used the bark to treat diarrhea and vomiting as well as a decoction for cow and horse sickness.  They also used the bark as an emetic in purification after funerals.  Many tribes used sassafrass in various forms for blood thinning, blood purifying and as a spring tonic.  Euell Gibbons in his book, Hunting the Wild Asparagus that traditionally, sassafrass root was made with maple sap water for a spring tonic to help the body better withstand the heat of the coming summer.

Did you know...

Sassafras has been called by many names such as the auge tree, saxifrax, cinnamon wood, sallop, smelling stick, tree tea, and chewing stick.

Sassafras was one of the first "discoveries" made in North America by Europeans and eas exported back to the Old World at a time when objects made of wood played an important role in everyday life.

Sassafras ships would make it back to England without harm and became known as a lucky wood because of its rot resistant properties.

Eric Sloane wrote about sassafras in his book "In Reverence of Wood" calling this tree the American Wonder Drug.

The largest sassafras tree is in Owensboro Kentucky.

Traditional root beer uses sassafras as a primary ingredient along with black birch branches or wintergreen.

Although sassafras has had a long and traditional use in medicine, today the main component in the wood, safrole which is concentrated in the roots is considered possibly carcinogenic by the FDA.