Thursday Thirteen No. 30: Bloodroot

Away back in '78, I actually learned something in science class that I have kept with me. In the spring of that year, our teacher, Mr. Primini (a fiery Italian with no first name we could imagine) would take us out to the nature center built by our predecessors along a stream behind our school. He charged us with the tasks of measuring the girth of various species of tree, drawing fiddlehead, and finding a range of rare wildflowers.

Bloodroot was among them. Anemone and trillium grew in abundance there then, but bloodroot was a rarity. This, of course was a part of the lesson.

I came across some on Sunday when I was working at the Sharon Garden Project in Sharon, Connecticut. I was so taken by the flower that I decided to reacquaint myself with this one of Connecticut's native wild flowers. Meet my friend:

1. Bloodroot grows anywhere from 6 to 12 inches

2. in rich woods.

3. Also known as puccoon,

4. its white flowers, which are 1 1/2 inches wide, bloom from March to May.

5. The flower thrives in partial to full shade in average to moist soil.

6. A broad leaf wraps around its delicate stalk.

7. American Indians used root tea for rheumatism, asthma, bronchitis, lung ailments, laryngitis, fevers, and as an emetic.

8. They applied root juice applied to warts and

9. Used as a dye and a decorative skin stain.

10. John Smith reported in 1612 that “pocones is a small roote that groweth in the mountaines, which being dryed and beate in powder turneth red; and this they [Indians]use for swellings, aches, annointing their joints, painting their heads and garments . . . and at night where his lodging is appointed, they set a woman fresh painted red with Pocones and oile, to be his bedfellow.”

11. On that subject: A bachelor of the Ponca tribe would rub a piece of the root as a love charm on the palm of his hand, then scheme to shake hands with the woman he desired to marry. After shaking hands, the girl would be found willing to marry him in 5 to 6 days.

12. American Indians and herbal practitioners have used it as a remedy for skin cancer, too.

13. It is an endangered wildflower.
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