| Notes |
SUMMARY: Several possibilities concerning this term. What is the geographic context? If the reference is to a Central American plant, then I can’t be of much help. If it is to a N.C. plant, then it is most likely Yucca filamentosa “Bear Grass”. There is a specimen of Yucca filamentosa among the Lawson plants in the Sloane Herbarium [H.S.149.59.5] collected July 8, 1710 along the Trent River. [NB VJB - This specimen is on the same page in the Sloane Herbarium as the Dwarf Chestnut.] THE ANSWER? I may have discovered the answer to the confusion above in the following statement found in Ewan (p.393): footnote 33. “Banister is correcting early errors in distinguishing between the aroids, “Tuckahoe,” and the euphorbiaceous “cassava” Manihot, the cultivation of which had been tried in Virginia. However, the phrase”Yucca foliis Cannabinus” bears testimony to the early confusion between the woody liliaceous genus Yucca, which Hariot seems to have described as ‘silkgrass,” [emphasis added] and Yuca or Cassava which does indeed have leaves like Hemp, Cannabis sativa. Hariot p.7 “Here is a kind of grass in the country upon the blades where of there growth very good silke in forme of a thin glittering skin to bee stript of. It growth two foots and a halfe high or better: the blades are about two foot in length, and halfinch broad.” Hariet compares this to a similar plant that grows in Persia. [NB VJB] Hariot was not alone in confusing the similar sounds of ‘Yuca’ (“You’ca”) and ‘Yucca’ (“Yuck ka”). Many folks today think that roots of our ‘beargrass’ are the same as the ‘Yucca = Casava = Manihot) that you can buy at Harris-Teeter today. The word is usually misspelled in the grocery stores as ‘Yucca’. “Silk-grass” is a vague term. ‘Hist. Nat. des Indes’, 1996, p. 257 lists ‘Pite’ (Silk-Grass) as: “This tree grows in the country of Le Rayne [Columbia] in the Magdalena River, also called Great River. They extract from it material to make a beautiful thread like silk having the color of silver.” [NB VJB] The poor quality illustration accompanying this description shows braches bearing alternate petioled trilobed leaves. The plant is described as a tree growing in the river. I judge from the spelling and orthography of this term that it may refer to something in the writings of the earliest English adventurers, something from Central America and not from the Eastern United States. Lawson p.195/6 ‘The Baskets our Neighboring Indians make, are all made of a very fine sort of Bulrushes , and sometimes of Silk-grass, which they work with Figures of Beastes, Birds, Fishes, Etc.” p.200 “ . . . sew perfectly well together, their Thread being . . . or, Silk-Grass.” Lawson collected a specimen which he labeled “Silk Grass” [H.S.242.117.3] I have identified this specimen as a ‘Carex sp.’, a plant not otherwise known as silk grass. Fernald ‘Gray’s Manual’ Silk grass mentioned on pp. 173, 438, and 1379. p. 173 Oryzopsis hymenoides (R. & S.) Ricker (Silk grass or Indian Millet) NOT present within 1000 miles of eastern US. p.438 Yucca filamentosa L. (Silk grass, Spoonleaf Yucca) (“Beargrass” in N.C.) Common on dunes, sandy dry soils, throughout Coastal Plain, N.J. to Ga. p. 1379. Chrysopsis graminifolia (Michx.) Ell. (Silkgrass) a ‘grass-leaved Aster’ This flowering plant, not a grass. Radford Radford, et al. (1968) ‘Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas’, Chapel Hill. Heterotheca graminifolia (Michaux) Shinners. C. graminifolia (above) is an older synonym for H. graminifolia. They are the same species. “Leaves linear, grass-like, entire, . . . 1-3.5 dm long, 3-10 mm wide . . . throughout the Piedmont in N.C., rare in Coastal Plain. (Beaufort Co.) Banister (Ewan) Mentions Yucca filamentosa on pp. 146, 393, 397. p. 146 [NB VJB – I cannot find a ref. to Yucca on this page!] p. 393 Footnote 33 (see above: The Answer?) p. 397 Footnote 63. Banister’s “silk-grass” in his letter from ‘The Falls” refers to Apocynum cannabinum. Back in his Oxford days he had mounted on one sheet (BM Sloane Herb., Vol. 168, f.183) a blossom and two leaves of Yucca filamentosa and a leaf of Apocynum cannabinum from the Physick Garden (VJB, at Chelsea), confirming the confusion that had developed as to the identity of ‘silk-grass.” Hariot about 1585, having been in the West Indies where species of Furcraea [NB VJB – ‘Sisal’] were called ‘Silk-grass” and used as a fiber, may have thought he was seeing Furcraea when he found either Yucca filamentosa, or if he reached far enough inland, Agave virginica, False aloe. Hariot wrote of “Silke-of Grasse or grasse Silke . . . upon the blades whereof very good silke in form of glistening skin to be stript of. It growth two foote and a half high or better: the blades are about two foot in length, and half inch broad.” This Indian use was quite different from its use as the fiber for cordage in Furcraea. As late as 1816-24, Stephen Elliott, Sketch 1:400, under Yucca filamentosa wrote: “The leaves of this plant twisted and tied together1 are used for strings, ropes, and even cables for small boats. It appears to possess the strongest fibers of any vegetable whatever, and if it can be raised with facility may form a valuable article in domestic economy. Silk Grass. Bear Grass,” and he added “Grows in loose rich soils, not confined to the sea coast.” Parkinson in Paradisi in sole (1629), undoubtedly compounded the confusion when he described Gerard’s copy of John White’s painting of Asclepias which Gerrard (1636), 898-900, had confused with Apocynuam, writing: “The cods are not only full of silke, but; every nerve or sinue wherewith the leaves be ribbed are likewise most pure silk and also the pilling of the stems, even as flax is torne from his stalkes. This considered, behold the justice of God, that hath shut up those people and nations in infidelity & nakedness, so hath he not given them understanding to cover their nakedness, nor matter wherewith to do the same; notwithstanding the earth is covered over with this silke, which daily they tred under their feet, which were sufficient to apparel many kingdoms, if they were carefully manured and cherished.” The silk (coma of the seeds) is used by the Indians, Gerard continues, “to cover the secret parts of maidens that never tasted man, as in other places they use a king of moss Wisank.” Parkinson of Apocynum or what he called “Periploca recta Virginiana. Virginian Silk” and “Wisanck’”.” wrote: “ and because it should not want an English name answerable to some peculiar property thereof. I have from the silken doune called it Virginian Silke: but I know there is another plant growing in Virginia, called Silke Grasse, which is much different from this.” Of “Yuca sive Iucca. The supposed Indian Iucca first brought to England from the West Indies . . . ,” Parkinson wrote, demonstrating another confusion of palnts: “Master Gerard first as I think called Iucca, supposing it to be the true Yuca of Thevet, wherewith the Indians make bread, called Cassana [Cassava]: the true Iucca is described to have a leafe divided into seven or nine parts [Manioc or Tapioca plant] which this hath not.” Of the virtues of Yucca he wrote “. . . Some have affirmed, that in some partds of Turkie, where they say this plant [but in reality Aloe] growth, they make a kind of cloth from the threads are found running through the leaves; but I find the threads are so strong and hard, that this cannot be the mpalnt the relators meane is used in that manner.” Of Asclepias incarnate [NB VJB – ‘milkweed] William Bartram wrote in sending a specimen to Dr. John Fothergill about 1774: “A vast Apocynum [which has] numerous large seed Vessels of Pods containing seeds adhering in long white cottony down, which burst forth in the autumn this down is long & seems capable of being wrought into some kind of usefull manufacture. The bark or skin of stem of this plant, might with great ease & advantage, be wrought to the same purpose of Flax or hemp, as it is very tough & firm, much finer and softer than either of them, the Indians make use of it, in short this is a most noble Vegitable & might undoubtedly be made servicible & very ornamental” (J. Ewan (1968), 157-158). Miller, Gardener’s Directory (ed. 6, 1752), lists “^. Aloe americana, folio viridi serrata. Silk-grass dicta. The American Aloe . . . called in the west Indes Silk-grass.” In his seventh edition (1759) Miller dropped the term “Sikk-grass.” On his visit to Virginia in 1802 Benjamin Smith Barton observed that Pawpaw stems were cut when about the thickness of Hemp, rotted, “that some watered it like hemp, to get the bark which . . . makes excellent and strong traces, fm pot eh marshes, ploughs, etc.” (McAtee (1938), 107). Acnida cannabina, Water hemp of the marshes, was also probably used for basket-making by the Indians. 1 [NB VJB – I actually did this when I taught field botany. We would strip the fleshy green tissue from a leaf of Beargrass, down to the parallel vascular strands within. Two students would then loop opposite ends around their index fingers and try to pull the leaf in two. None ever succeeded. I also made strings of twisted beargrass leaf to bind wat the Aurora Fossil Museum.] |
