Sassafras
Growth Habit
TreeBiocultural Value
Sassafras provides wood and bark for a variety of commercial and domestic uses. Tea is brewed from the bark of roots. The root bark and root pith are alterative, anodyne, antiseptic, aromatic, carminative, diaphoretic, diuretic, stimulant and vasodilator. A tea made from the root bark is particularly renowned as a spring tonic and blood purifier as well as a household cure for a wide range of ailments such as gastrointestinal complaints, colds, kidney ailments, rheumatism and skin eruptions. An essential oil from the root bark is used as an antiseptic in dentistry and also as an anodyne. The young leaves can be added to salads whilst both old and young leaves can be used as a flavoring and as a thickening agent in soups etc. They have a mild aromatic flavor. The leaves are often dried and ground into powder for later use. The young shoots have been used to make a kind of beer. The dried root bark can be boiled with sugar and water until it forms a thick paste. It is then used as a condiment. The extracted essential oil is poisonous in large quantities. The essential il contains safrole which is known to be carcinogenic and potentially harmful to the liver. The leaves are used in thickening soups. The orange wood has been used for cooperage, buckets, posts, and furniture. The oil is used to perfume some soaps.
Wildlife Value
Kingbird, crested flycatcher, and phoebe, all members of the flycatcher family and all subsisting primarily on insects, eat sassafras fruits. Swallowtail butterflies like to eat the leaves. The bark, twigs, and leaves of sassafras are important foods for wildlife in some areas. Deer browse the twigs in the winter and the leaves and succulent growth during spring and summer. Palatability, although quite variable, is considered good throughout the range.
Poisonous
YesLocation
Bald Hill and Caroline Pinnacles, Fall Creek Gorge, Fischer Old-growth Forest, Mundy Wildflower GardenDescription
Tree, 30' to 60' tall, 25' to 40' wide; can grow larger. Pyramidal, irregular tree or shrub in youth, with many, short, stout, contorted branches, which spread to form a flat-topped, irregular, round-oblong head at maturity; often sprouting from the roots and forming extensive thickets. Bark dark reddish-brown,deeply ridged and furrowed, forming corky ridges that are easily cut across with a knife; bark almostmahogany-brown, handsome when mature. Foliage bright to medium green, changing to tones of yellow to deep orange to scarlet and purple in fall; one of our most outstanding native trees for fall color. Flowers usually dioecious, yellow, fragrant, developing before the leaves in April, borne in terminal racemes, 1" to 2" long, apetalous, calyx about 3/8" long and wide, with 6 narrowly oblong lobes, 9 stamens in male, and 6 aborted in the female; flowers are actually quite handsome and can be readily distinguished in the spring landscape.
Source of plant
Avant Gardens, Woodlanders Inc., Forestfarm Nursery, Woodlanders Inc., Ruth Nix
