Plant range and properties: A ripe peach is a treasure, surely worth its own golden weight in its fragrant sweetness. Originally from China, peach trees were introduced to North America in St. Augustine, Florida, by Spanish monks in the mid-1500s, and became a cornerstone of the Appalachian and deep South folk medicine tradition. Indigenous peoples throughout the Southeast and as far north as modern-day Philadelphia planted peaches and tended peach groves for their delicious fruits, useful wood, and medicinal leaves and bark.
The peach tree holds a story of early colonization as well, a sad and bitter tale. In the summer of 1779, the infamous George Washington sent an army in a raid designed to punish the Seneca and Cayuga peoples for supporting the British during the American Revolution. Washington insisted the Indigenous-held lands be completely destroyed: “The destruction of their settlements so final and complete, as to put it out of their power to derive the smallest succour from them, in case they should even attempt to return this season.” These lands had been rich with fruit trees, and many of those peaches had been selected for decades by Indigenous hands.
Medical and magical uses: Though the fruit of the peach seems an innocent fancy, the kernel and wilted leaves both contain some traces of cyanogenic glycoside toxins that are best avoided. Always use fully dried or fresh leaves for medicine and magic.
Peach is the Water Witch’s tree. Water Witches find water through dowsing, the art of finding objects through non-scientific means. Some folks use a forked branch of willow or hazel, but peach wood is by far the best in the Appalachians.
The root bark of the peach tree is used for a tea to treat dysentery; however, an important act of sympathetic magic must be performed to effect a cure. The root bark must be scraped upward when harvested: only then will the healing powers it contains be available.
The peach leaves are also relished in Appalachian folk medicine. Peach leaves and root bark were mixed with dogwood bark for fever, especially the dreaded consumption or tuberculosis that ravaged many with intermittent fevers. The kidneys and bladder also benefit from the tea of the peach leaf.
Peach was regarded so highly for healing that the tea of the leaf was even used externally as a wash for hard-to-heal wounds and the itch of poison ivy.
Peach is a veritable cure-all. One can also magically cure a headache by wrapping the leaves of the peach tree around the head.
A tea of peach tree leaves is also used as a wash for the hair: a hair tonic, if you will. To make this, gently simmer a handful of peach leaves in a quart of water. Cool and place in a jar in the fridge for up to one week. After washing your hair, do a final rinse with the peach leaf tea.
For a crick in the neck, tie a tender green peach tree twig with the bark skinned off around your neck. Wear this all night, and in the morning the crick will be gone.
You can also charm away warts with the aid of the peach tree. Cut a notch in the young growth of a peach tree limb for each wart. Bury the branch in some damp place, and when the twig rots away, so too shall the warts be gone.
Peach really shines as a nerve tonic as well. In mountain medicine, tonics are an important rite of spring. Tommie Bass, famed Alabama herbalist, made a nerve tonic that used some of the most famous nerve-calming herbs of the Appalachian tradition: dried peach leaves and flowers of maypop, sage, peppermint, skullcap, and catnip mixed in equal parts together as a tea is a tried-and-true way to sooth the jitters of anxiety or an uneasy heart.
PERSIMMON
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DIOSPYROS VIRGINIANA
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Plant range and properties: This magnificent native tree has some of the most deeply fissured bark in the woods. The orange, sweet, soft fruits that fall every autumn are delicious calories for the long Appalachian winters and make perfect pies, puddings, and custards. Animals of all types, especially deer, possums, and raccoons, love the abundant fallen fruits. The wood is hard and finishes at a high polish, just like its other cousins in the ebony family. The leaves, root bark, and unripe fruits are all rich in tannins, a group of bitter, astringent compounds. Astringent herbs and plant parts are essential in folk medicine for their ability to tighten inflamed tissues.
Medical and magical uses:
Tea of the root bark of persimmon trees has long been a vital remedy for dysentery, sore throat, and mouth and stomach ulcers. Indigenous peoples used this native tree to treat indigestion, thrush, and many other conditions by making syrups of the fruits as well as making tea with the leaves and bark. Scraping the bark from the north side of the tree is said to make the best medicine, especially to treat thrush.
Persimmon trees are also magically used to take away chills and fever. If you have a fever, tie as many knots in a piece of plain cotton string as you have chills and tie the string to a persimmon tree. However, make sure not to look back as you walk away, or the spell will not work.
Persimmons also predict the weather. Inside each shiny, brown persimmon seed is a small white kernel. There are three different shapes that lie within: a spoon, a fork, or a knife. The spoon foretells heavy snow, the knife predicts cold that will cut you to the bone, and the fork heralds a mild winter.
These seeds also make lovely buttons and beads for jewelry once they are dried well.
POKE
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PHYTOLACCA AMERICANA
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Note: The entire plant is poisonous except for the fruit of the berries.The roots, shoots, leaves, and seeds inside the berries are all poisonous to varying degrees and must either be cooked properly with expert guidance or not trifled with.
Plant range and properties: The corpulent, fleshy stems of pokeweed and its dark purple berries make this native American plant unmistakable along roadsides and areas with disturbed soil. It holds a unique threefold reputation as a poisonous plant, a wild food, and a medicine. Poke holds a special place in the memories of many Appalachians as an early spring vegetable touted for its healthful virtues by well-meaning grannies. This wild food and medicine is still enjoyed each year in spring when the tender new shoots are under six inches in height. In the Ozarks, where the folk practices share many similarities with Appalachia’s, it was said that eating specially prepared young poke greens nine times in spring would ensure the eater’s protection from illness.
This tradition of eating the greens in spring stems from the botanical phenomenon of a compound in the root called phytolaccine. It moves throughout the tissues of the plant as spring progresses to summer and is toxic in large doses. One could look at it from an animistic viewpoint as the plant making an offering of nourishment to those who know how to safely seek it. Traditionally, poke is prepared by cutting the young, tender shoots and leaves no higher than a hand, and boiling in one to three changes of water. You then drain the water and proceed to “kill it” by frying it in grease. The flavor is lemony and quite pleasant despite the plant’s precarious reputation. The berries can also be used for lovely crimson dyes and to make a sort of ink which can still be employed by the adventuresome practitioner.
The flavor is lemony and quite pleasant despite the plant’s precarious reputation.
Medical and magical uses: In folk medicine, poke root has many uses. The roots were used in Appalachia boiled and applied warm as a poultice or tea to the skin for eczema, ringworm, and fungal infections. It was also used to treat breast cancer and swollen breasts after childbirth. A strong poke root tea was also the cure for the dreaded scabies or “the seven year itch.” Essentially, a strong root decoction was used to cleanse the body of painful, persistent skin conditions.
These uses stem from Cherokee healing traditions and were incorporated into the folk medical ways of European and African Appalachians. In modern herbal practice, this low-dose medicinal is used in the form of a tincture for problems with growths, cysts, and lymphatic drainage issues, as well as an immune stimulant. Dosing this can be difficult, as the plant is quite strong, so please refrain from ingestion without the advice of an experienced herbalist. A salve of the root is also used for cysts and growths of various types. In Appalachian folk medicine, always apply salve with the middle finger, or it won’t work right.
The magical uses of poke root are grounded in the Southern African-American folk magic tradition known variously as Hoodoo, rootwork, conjure, and other names. Magically, the root is used in modern rootwork for breaking curses, finding lost objects, and bringing courage to the carrier. Pieces of the sliced root were historically placed in one’s shoes to stave off arthritis. To drive off an enemy, powdered poke root was mixed into dirt from the maligned person’s footprint, blended into melted wax, then thrown into running water. The tea of poke root was also used to break curses and in the performing of uncrossing rituals when added to bathwater. This act of sympathetic magic could be the ultimate expression of the medicinal cleansing power of this potent root. It not only drives away skin irritations and tumors, but its cleansing abilities are so powerful, it is believed to even drive away a troublesome person.
The berries provide a lovely purple to pink dye when vinegar is applied as a mordant to natural materials. It also makes a fine magical ink, for the seeds of the berries are poisonous, and what better way to write our secrets then in poison ink? Anywhere belladonna ink, bat’s blood, or dove’s blood ink is called for, use poke berries soaked in rubbing alcohol to create a brilliant poisonous, purple paint to draw sigils and perform your rites.
RABBIT TOBACCO
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