Posted on 08/04/2015 9:46:24 AM PDT by Theoria
During a severe drought in 2011, JennaDee Detro noticed that many trees on the family cattle ranch in Cat Spring, Texas, withered, but a certain evergreen holly appeared vigorous. It's called a yaupon.
"The best we can tell is that they enjoy suffering," Detro says with a laugh. "So this kind of extreme weather in Texas — and the extreme soil conditions — are perfect for the yaupon."
Detro began researching yaupon — a tree abundant in its native range, from coastal North Carolina to East Texas — and discovered that the plant contains caffeine and has a remarkable history.
A thousand years ago, Native American traders dried, packed and shipped the leaves all the way to Cahokia, the ancient mound city near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Native Americans sometimes used it in purification rituals involving purging (this led to its Latin name, Ilex vomitoria — a misnomer, because yaupon is not an emetic). Traveling through North Carolina in 1775, the naturalist William Bartram said Cherokees called yaupon "the beloved tree." Early settlers even exported yaupon to Europe.
But yaupon was eventually elbowed aside by what purists call true tea – made from the leaves of the Asian shrub Camellia sinensis. (Technically, yaupon is an herbal infusion.) Because of yaupon's recent obscurity, Detro had to learn how to dry and prepare the leaves on her own.
"There is a lost art of preparing yaupon tea," says Detro, "because there are so many years between the Native American use of yaupon tea and our modern use of yaupon tea."
After Detro learned how to process the leaves, she told her sister, Abianne Falla, about her plans to sell the product at a farmer's market or two.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Pinging since this was certainly of interest to THIS prepper...
The Elizabeth Warren types will likely go for yaupon but camellia is a common plant throughout many parts of the United States and the tea camellia is but one variety of hundreds.
Very interesting! Wikipedia says it also has Theobromine.
I guess I’m going to have to plant some of this in the garden when we move next year and ‘experiment’ a little bit.
I’d already planned on growing some tea.
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Sounds like a plot point of a Rosemary & Thyme episode. Good series. Felicity Kendall and a vintage Rover.
ping
Just last night I was reding up on frankincense. It too is a hardy tree. It not only grows, but seems to thrive, in the most inhospitable of environments.
And within the past two years or so, they’ve discovered some interesting medical abilities, like killing certain cancers.
It’s amazing some of the things that have been lost to history. Only to be rediscovered and shown that the ancients knew a few things.
FRiends... this statement from the article is pure 100% crap:
” led to its Latin name, Ilex vomitoria — a misnomer, because yaupon is not an emetic”
I can tell you with 100% certainty that it IS an EMETIC. We told the kids that it was at Scout Camp one summer... one of the problem kids, Will, just had to try it. He threw up everything but his toenails and I’m not really sure that was not included somewhere.
I don’t know where this author is getting information but it is wrong on this point.
We have the crap all over the place. It is true, it does love to suffer. It also burns EXPLOSIVELY! Do not allow it to grow up around your house. In the fires of 2011 here in SE Texas it was mostly responsible for the ladder fires and flames more than 100’ high. The first time I burned a pile of it I wished I had never set a match to it. It EXPLODED! Apparently it contains a lot of WAX of some sort.
The deer eat it when they are hard up but that is all I have ever seen give it a shot.
Living in TX, we grew up around yaupon Holly, and were always told it was poisonous to people and dogs. Also, it was known as a deer resistant plant for landscaping.
Here in Central/Eastern NC yaupon is extremely common.
Along the Coast huge thickets of it.
It grows on our property.
You might want to experiment shooting yourself in the head before you experiment growing it in your garden.
In the right location it will go absolutely crazy and spread everywhere. New shoots come up from the roots.
If you decide to get rid of it you have to get rid of all the roots or it will come back.
There is an ornamental yaupon that people plat as shrubs but it’s a dwarf type.
>>> New shoots come up from the roots. <<<
Thanks for the heads-up on that!
I’ll handle it like one of the mint family. Stick a chimney tile in the ground and plant inside that.
The roots will probably break it.
It’s not a small bush it’s a small tree.
Left alone you will have multiple offshoots coming up that will get over 6 inches in diameter and over 15 feet high.
What benefits are derived from Yaupon tea that would justify the efforts to create a tea from it?
Wikipedia, of course.
Well, it’s wrong. Anybody, including me, can write anything on the internet and claim it is true.
NOTHING is deer proof, only deer resistant.... I think the dastardly beasts will eat wood. I’ve had to weld cages for any plants I don’t want eaten by deer.
I know it was the yaupon that caused the kid to throw up because there were little yaupon leave bits all in the lunch chunks and skittles and other junk he ate.... like cutting open a shark. You got to see what he ate the last day.
>>> It’s not a small bush it’s a small tree.
Left alone you will have multiple offshoots coming up that will get over 6 inches in diameter and over 15 feet high. <<<
I think I’ve just been dissuaded. ;^}
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