Herba Cana - Northeastern Illinois University

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© 2004 by CRC Press 488 Florida Ethnobotany tuckahaw (according to Romans [1775] 1961, there was a Chickasaw town named for this plant, and using the Algonquian word) tuckahoe [tockwhogh, tockawhoughe, taw-ho] (from Powhatan, Virginia); coscúshaw (Carolina Algonquians; see also Geary 1955) [Virginian] wake robin (New England) Although there is considerable confusion about the original identify of tuckahoe, it has become associated with Peltandra since being discussed by Kalm ([1753 /1761] 1972), who had personal knowledge of the plants and the people using the name. That Powhatan word is related to petukqunneg (cake of bread, from petukqui, bread, pitikwah, made round, Cree). The distribution of the words presumably corresponds to part of the range of usage. However, most of these terms were transferred to maize when it was introduced, and that has complicated the situation. The first record of the indigenous use of these roots is in 1612 when Capt. John Smith wrote, ‘‘In Iune, Iulie and August they feede vpon the rootes of Tockwough, berries, fish and green wheat [maize]’’ (OED 1971). Strachey recorded the plant and name the same year. The Seminoles also use the plant for food (Sturtevant 1955). Tull (1999) indicated that long periods of drying (sometimes months) and baking are necessary to render the acrid roots palatable. Both roots and fruits were eaten after detoxification. Methods of preparing them are given by Fernald et al. (1958). Harriot ([1590] 1972) had recorded another name and use among his list of fruits. He called them sacqvenvmmener, and not long afterward Strachey and Capt. John Smith called them ocoughtanamins. Harriot ([1590] 1972) wrote that sacqvenvmmener were ‘‘a kinde of berries almost like vnto capres [capers, Capparis] but somewhat greater which being grow together in clusters vpon a plant or herb that is found in shallow waters: being boiled eight or nine hours according to their kind are very good meate and holesome, otherwise if they be eaten they will make a man for the time franticke or extremely sicke.’’ Smith thought they should be boiled half a day (Swanton 1946). Yanovsky (1936) may have confused Orontium with Peltandra. Still, he listed Peltandra as having been eaten in all the southeastern states, and in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, a distribution agreeing with its Algonquian names. Moerman (1998) indicates that the Nanticoke of Delaware grated the roots in milk and gave it to babies for some unstated medical reason. Penstemon (From Greek pente, five, and stemon, stamen, referring to the four fertile stamens and one sterile staminode) Penstemon laevigatus (smooth) [eastern smooth, foxglove, hairy] beard-tongue Europeans were familiar with Digitalis when they arrived in the New World, but here they found plants somewhat different from that old medicinal herb. When Casimir Christoph Schmidel (1718 /1792), a German physician at Erlangen, was working with plants grown in Kew Gardens outside London, he decided that the American plants should have a distinct name. He called them Penstemon in 1763 because of their androecial arrangement. The genus now has grown to 250 species, with all but one confined to North America (Mabberley 1997). One of the species discovered after Schmidel was P. laevigatus. This herb, also described from plants grown at Kew, was named by William Aiton in 1789, and the specimen he used to name the species is in the Fothergill collection at the British Museum of Natural History. Smooth beard-tongue ranges from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia south to Florida (Gadsden and Jackson Counties), and west into Alabama and Mississippi. Not much information is available about this plant. The Cherokee used an infusion of P. laevigatus to stop cramps (Hamel and Chiltoskey 1975). This is probably the same species used by the Creeks and Natchez for colds, coughs, consumption, and whooping cough (Swanton 1928a). Porcher (1863), Millspaugh (1892), Vogel (1970), and Foster and Duke (1990) do not mention the genus. However, other Penstemon species were used by the Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota, Pawnee, and several tribes farther west. Moerman (1998) found records of 23 other species being used. Some Penstemon contain iridoid glycosides, especially catapol, and both moths and butterflies have adapted to sequester and use those compounds. The inchworm and looper moths Neoterpes graefiaria and Meris alticola take catapol from Penstemon, and the Arachne checkerspot butterfly (Polydryas arachne) also uses it. Pentalinon (Friedrich S. Voigt, 1781 /1850, named this with Greek pente, five, and linon, rope, a reference to the elongated anther appendages)
© 2004 by CRC Press The Ethnobotany 489 Pentalinon luteum. a. Flowering branch. b. Node. c. Flower tube, longitudinally dissected. d. Floral diagram. e. Fruits. f. Seed with coma. g. Seed. Drawn by Priscilla Fawcett. From Correll and Correll 1982. Pentalinon luteum (yellow) ( /Urechites lutea) [bejuco] ahoga vaca (cow strangler [vine], Dominican Republic) barbeiro amarillo (yellow beard, Puerto Rico) bejuco marrullero (false? climber, Cuba) Catesby’s vine (Bahamas) clavelitos (little carnation, Cuba) corne cabrits (goat horn, Haiti) curamagüey (Taino?, Hispaniola) Dominican viper tail (Dominican Republic); hammock viper’s tail [viperstail] (Florida) Jamaica nightshade (Jamaica); yellow nightshade (Jamaica?); nightshade (Cayman Islands) wild allamanda (Florida) wild unction (unction /ointment, Bahamas) Linnaeus ([1753] 1957) called these climbers Vinca lutea. Then, for many decades, they were called Urechites lutea, a genus established in 1860 by the Swiss botanist Johannes Müller of Aargau. However, Bruce Hansen realized that Pentalinon, described from plants grown in the Calcutta Botanical Garden in 1845, was an earlier and valid generic name (Hansen and Wunderlin 1986). Pentalinon now contains two species, both native to Florida, Central America, and the Caribbean. In the Dominican Republic Pentalinon is used to treat heart disease (cardiotonic), edema, fever, and colic, and as a purgative (Hocking 1997). Plants are used to treat headache in Guatemala (Rosatti 1989). However, doing so is dangerous because the latex is poisonous, having been used to poison arrows in tropical countries (Rosatti 1989). It is poisonous to cattle; people powder the leaves to kill destructive insects and animals (ants, dogs) (Liogier 1974). Among the poisonous compounds are the cardenolides oleandrin, urechitin, and urechitoxin (Gibbs 1974). Penthorum (From Greek pente, five, and horos, a column or pillar, referring to the five-parted flowers) Penthorum sedoides. a. Top of plant. b. Part of procumbent stem of plant with roots. c. Cluster of flowers and fruits. Drawn by Vivian Frazier. From Correll and Correll 1972. Penthorum sedoides (like Sedum) [ditch, Virginia] stonecrop (from Old English stáncrop, combining ‘‘stone,’’ a rock, and
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Herba Cana - Northeastern Illinois University

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