1. Rinse and chop the wild greens very finely and add to a bowl.
2. Add a few bits of red clover (Trifolium pratense) flowers as a lovely garnish.
3. To make a dressing, in a small jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of raw apple cider vinegar, 3 cloves of finely chopped raw garlic, and a hearty sprinkle of salt. Shake this well and dress your wild salad.
Aside from drinking brews, one could also eat tonics. There are a variety of spring tonic food practices, such as eating a mess of poke, branch lettuce (Saxifraga micranthidifolia), and watercress (Nasturtium officinale). Eating nourishing meals of plentiful early spring greens is a great way to engage with the practice of tonics today. Things like chickweed (Stellaria media), hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), and dandelion greens make wonderful bases to tonic meals, or when macerated in vinegar, tonic salad dressings. Drinking water in which iron nails had been soaked and simply cooking in cast iron were two more culinary tonics. While cooking in cast iron is a lovely thing to do today, I would not suggest drinking nail water—some practices are best left as curiosities.
Bitter herbs make up the other class of spring tonics; the very fact that they were strongly flavored was seen as evidence of their power. An example of a tonic from Kentucky was one made from white pine bark (Pinus strobus), yellow dock (Rumex crispus), sarsaparilla, goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), mayapple root (Podophyllum peltatum), apple bark (Malus spp.), poplar bark (Liriodendron tulipifera), bear paw root (Dryopteris filix-mas), peppermint (Mentha × piperita), and mullein (Verbascum thapsus). This was a true mix of native and introduced plants with many highly bitter ingredients. Plants didn’t have to have a strong bitter flavor, for some of the tastiest tonics brewed as teas or decoctions were sassafras (Sassafras albidum), spicebush (Lindera benzoin), cherry bark (Prunus serotina), and black or sweet birch (Betula lenta).
Tommie Bass, a legendary Alabama herbalist and salve maker, recommended red clover (Trifolium pratense) tea—or white clover (Trifolium repens) if you couldn’t find red—as a tonic to build the blood. The most-used tonic herbs he recommended were yellow root (Xanthorhiza simplicissima), dandelion, gentian (Gentiana spp.), and goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), all strong bitters. Tommie Bass’s tonic has angelico or boar hog root (Ligusticum canadensis), yellow root, boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), wild cherry bark, cayenne pepper (Capsicum annuum), and sometimes ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) and dandelion.
Not all tonics were geared toward digestive health, however. Tommie Bass had a tonic to calm the nerves which contained maypop (Passiflora incarnata), sage (Salvia officinalis), peppermint, skullcap (Scutellaria spp.), and peach leaves (Prunus persica). Many tonics involved water or vinegar as a menstruum, but whiskey was also an oft-used ingredient. Noted folklorist Doug Elliott writes that some mountaineers used alcohol tonics as a means of getting around temperance.
Some mountaineers used alcohol tonics as a means of getting around temperance.
Like bitter roots, astringent barks were also commonly employed as tonics. Wild cherry bark, dogwood bark, and sassafras roots were combined and boiled to make a good tonic for the blood. Sassafras, long held to have a plethora of healing qualities, from weight loss to syphilis cures, could also help better the flavor of a brew. Wild cherry was a highly esteemed tonic bark as a decoction or soaked in vinegar or whiskey. It was also mixed with the astringent oak (Quercus rubra). Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) bark (or root bark) tea, with enough whiskey in it to keep it from souring, makes a good tonic. These varying mixtures of bitter, astringent, and aromatic plant parts formed the backbone of the tonic tradition.
Homemade tonics were eventually displaced in most homes by commercial products like Scout’s Indian Tonic, Hadacol, and Geritol, which some folks still remember taking. By the 1960s to 1970s, however, the tradition of taking tonics seasonally had fallen out of general practice. Today, it seems an antiquarian fancy. However, there is still much value in tonics in our modern practice of folk medicine. Enjoying tonic spring foods or crafting herbal bitters for winter meals are two lovely ways to experience this medicinal legacy for yourself. I use wild cherry bark bitters as an homage to the cherry bark in whiskey tonic of history and make sassafras and spicebush tea to build my blood in spring.
SPICEBUSH TEA
Note: Always ensure correct identification before consuming a new plant.
Lindera benzoin, our native spicebush, sits in the laurel family alongside another amazing native plant rich with lore and medicine, sassafras. Spicebush is dioecious, meaning it has male and female flowers on separate plants. Its unique, papery thin leaves ensure this understory plant can maximize its sunlight absorption.
This delicious tea is reminiscent of orange peel and masala. It was traditionally drunk before tense conversations in tribal council by some groups within the Cherokee nation and was said to not only cleanse the blood but also to enliven the sense of friendship.
1. Get a nice quart (1 L) of water boiling.
2. Add a large handful of finely broken spicebush twigs, leaves stripped off.
3. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
4. Strain with a mesh strainer.
5. Sweeten with honey to taste or enjoy plain.
Many of the herbs mentioned here are good medicines and do their part in supporting overall well-being through their actions as bitters, astringents, carminatives, digestives, and more. The Appalachian tonic tradition is rooted in the complex history and unique ecology of this special place. With bitter or fragrant barks, leaves, and roots in golden whiskey or tart vinegar, the people of Appalachia took charge of their health and found ways to bring themselves into balance. I invite you to step into the verdant Appalachian landscape and meet some of these abundant and healing plants of the tonic tradition.
III 
THE YARBS:
OCCULT USES OF APPALACHIAN HERBS
THESE ARE SOME OF THE MOST ICONIC AND SPECIAL PLANTS used as remedies, both magical and medicinal, in the mountains. They form a small part of the large lexicon of healing mountain plants. Some of these plants are also not from here but represent the unique mixing of cultures that Appalachia is made from. Proceed with a humble spirit in the world of plantcraft, for so much has been lost—but luckily not all.
When the closest doctor was miles away by horseback, the forest and fields were the drugstore. The people who knew how to identify and make medicine with plants were necessary and important people in their mountain communities and still are today. Yarb People, herbalists, or Rootworkers in Black Appalachian communities were and are the backbone of healthcare and healing in places that are hard to reach and underserved. While some plant cures are best left as historical fancies, others are still valuable parts of self and community care.
WARNING.
Before there was a pharmacy, there was the forest. Creating a relationship with healing plants takes a lifetime of care and attention. Do not attempt to ingest any plants without learning from a qualified herbalist. Plants can cure, but they can also kill.
ASAFOETIDA
(
FERULA ASAFOETIDA
)
