Anyone know uses for sassafras?

Question

We have a bunch of trees on our land but dont know if it worth anything or even what it is used for or what it can do for a person.

Answer 1

sassafras is one of the first trees to putout leaves in the spring. You can identify sassafras by the fact that one plant will have three different types of leaves, and if you break off a twig, it will smell sort of like root beer.

Sassafras normally grows in poor soil. If they are growing on a bank that washes a lot in rains, don't cut it down. They have an enormous root pattern underground and those tend to hold better soils in, thus improving the soil in the bad area where they are growing.

Right now, there is little you can do with it. In the spring as it leaves out, you can cut roots, take them into the house, split them into splinters, and boil them to a tea. It was used by pioneers as a source of iron in their diet which is hard to get in the winter. Also vitamin C

Once you have the tea, you can drink it or you can make a jelly out of it much the same way that you would make jelly out of grape juice.

If you live in a climate where there are also black birches, which have a wintergreen smell to them when you break the twigs, you can mix small sticks ffrom the birch and mix them into sassafras to make a minted sassafras tea or jelly.

If you came from the place that I did, you would know what you could eat that grows in your lawn or on your property and get some fine flavors. There are books on edible wild plants. I used to gather sassafras and wild greens with my grandfather and when I had children, we went out and I taught them.

With sassafras, it is best to use it when the sap it rising.

You can use it also for scenting soaps, candles, or other thigns.

Don't cut down a big tree to make tea with, and I would not use it in a fire place because it is in the same family as Magnolia and Poplar and those woods will pop and send out flaming ash into your living room.

Answer 2

Sassafras root makes an excellent tea if made properly. Use the roots of a young, small saplings that you can dig easily. Boil your water first, turn off stove throw in a fistful of washed fragrant roots into the water, cover with lid and let steep for about 20 minutes. Add organic sugar to taste or not.
Never boil Sassafras tea once it has been made. It ruins the tea. Gives it a burnt taste.
Large Sasafrass Trees make good hot burning firewood. But almost too hot to use in wood cook stove.

Answer 3

The Story: Sassafras was originally known to have been introduced to colonists by the American Indians. Early Spanish, French and Dutch settlers reported Sassafras products to be "Indian Medicine". It was one of the first exports from the Jamestown Colony. Uses for Sassafras included: medicine, tea, soap (for youthful skin), used in bedding to repel bedbugs and assure sound sleep, The aroma was also said to keep chicken lice out of the hen-house. Its early uses ranged from silly to practical. It was also widely used to eliminate the most offensive odors.

Sassafras roots were hung in and around outhouses. It was also put to use in Taverns and Saloons. Sections of Sassafras root were submerged in glasses of water behind the bar to contend with the putrid smell of stale beer. Someone added sugar to a glass of Sassafras and water and invented Sarsaparilla also known as Root Beer.

http://www.stain-x.com/sf.htm

Answer 4

Aromatic, stimulant, diaphoretic, alterative.
It is rarely given alone, but is often combined with guaiacum or sarsaparilla in chronic rheumatism, syphilis, and skin diseases.

The oil is said to relieve the pain caused by menstrual obstructions, and pain following parturition, in doses of 5 to 10 drops on sugar, the same dose having been found useful in gleet and gonorrhoea.

Safrol is found to be slowly absorbed from the alimentary canal, escaping through the lungs unaltered, and through the kidneys oxidized into piperonalic acid.

A teaspoonful of the oil produced vomiting, dilated pupils, stupor and collapse in a young man.

It is used as a local application for wens and for rheumatic pains, and it has been praised as a dental disinfectant.

Its use has caused abortion in several cases.

Dr. Shelby of Huntsville stated that it would both prevent and remove the injurious effects of tobacco.

A lotion of rose-water or distilled water, with Sassafras Pith, filtered after standing for four hours, is recommended for the eyes.

---Dosage---Of fluid extract, 1/2 to 1 drachm. Of Sassafras bark, 1 to 2 drachms. Of oil of Sassafras, 1 to 5 drops. Mucilage, U.S.P., 4 drachms.

---Poison and Antidotes---The oil can produce marked narcotic poisoning, and death by causing widespread fatty degeneration of the heart, liver, and kidneys, or, in a larger dose, by great depression of the circulation, followed by a centric paralysis of respiration.

Answer 5

Add dried sassafras to chicken or turkey broth w/ rice for gumbo file', a good cajun recipe.

Answer 6

get some of the roots, clean them with a chemica;l free brillo pad made of plastic, (baisicly scrub the dirt off REAL good,) split the roots in 2, for every foot of root tip, add 2 cups boiling water with 1/3 cup white sugar and 3 tea spoons brown sugar and you have a good and tasty tea. boil this all down to a cup and add it to tonic or soda water and you got sassafrass soda even,(1 cup tea per 3 & 1/2 cup's soda or tonic water.)

Answer 7

Ask some older folks, they made sassafras tea and candy, who knows whatelse.

Answer 8

My mother would drink the tea in the spring to "help thin the blood." Must have worked, she's 91 years old. Here's a website for the herb: http://www.nisbett.com/herbs/s/sassaf20.html

Answer 9

Tea, and it makes your house smell good, spread some inside.

Answer 10

It is also used in root beer.