Herba Cana - Northeastern Illinois University

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The Ethnobotany 537
Buckingham Smith translated this as follows: ‘‘On
this lake, which lies in the midst of the country, are
many towns, of thirty or forty inhabitants each; and as
many more places there are. They have bread of roots
[Smilax], which is their common food the greater part
of the time; and because of the lake, which rises in
some seasons so high that the roots cannot be reached
in consequence of the water, they are for some time
without eating this bread. Fish is plenty and very
good. There is another root, like the truffle over here,
which is sweet.’’
In spite of Fontaneda’s comparison of the second
root to truffles, Smith interpreted the turma as being
Apios americana. Smith had apparently never been in
swamps where Apios grows, or he would not have
selected that species. If the water was too high for their
common food (Smilax), it was certainly too deep to
gather Apios. Elsewhere I have made the argument that
the ‘‘bread’’ noted by Fontaneda was the carpophore
of Polyporus (Austin 1980). Gerard (1907) found the
product also being eaten by the Virginia Algonquians.
Polypremum
(From Greek polypremnos, many-stemmed)
Polypremum procumbens. a. Flowering branch. b. Twig with
flower. c. Flower, from above. d. Flower, longitudinally
dissected. e. Pistil. f. Floral diagram. g. Fruit within calyx.
h. Fruit. Drawn by Priscilla Fawcett. From Correll and
Correll 1982.
Polypremum procumbens (prostrate or lying on the
ground, meaning the stems)
rust-weed
Polypremum was named by Linnaeus in 1753. The
genus contains a single species in the warm parts of
the Americas. Although few disagree that it a distinct
species, there is contention regarding its familial
relationships (Cronquist 1981, Mabberley 1997).
The plant is used as a remedy for metritis (uterus
inflammation) in El Salvador (Von Reis 1973).
Polystichum
(From Greek polys, many, and stichos, rows, alluding
to the sori of some species being in ranks)
Polystichum acrostichoides (resembling Acrostichum,
which see)
bear’s bed (derived from the Cherokee name); yana
utseta (the bear lies on it, Cherokee)
canker-brake (‘‘canker’’ came from Old Northern
French cancre, and appeared in English by about
A.D. 1000; the word is cognate with ‘‘cancer’’;
historically, the disease was a malady of the
mouth; ‘‘brake’’ is akin to Old Swedish braekne,
fern)
Christmas fern
dagger fern (from the shape of the leaflets)
fougère à faucilles (sickle fern, Quebec)
shield fern
tapasi’ moso’here (flower on [branch grows] rough,
Catawba; not distinguished from Pleopeltis,
which see)
No one had to explain the reason for calling the
plants ‘‘Christmas fern’’ when I learned it on a college
course field trip in the early 1960s. Around us the
woodland was bleak from the winter cold, with bare
trees, dead and fallen leaves on the ground, and ice
covering the surface of the creek. Tucked in a hillside
crevice of rich organic soil was this single green plant.
From the name, I surmised that people had used this
evergreen plant in decorations at Christmas time. I
was correct, but the fern appeared in the literature
under that name only in 1878. People of North
America probably began using the name much earlier.
Polystichum is a genus with four European species
(Mabberley 1997). While Kartesz (1994) recognized 24
species and 2 named hybrids in the United States and
Canada, only 15 were included in the Flora of North
America (Wagner 1993).
The German physician Albrecht W. Roth (1757 /
1834) created the genus Polystichum in 1799 for a