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THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: GROWING UP IN THE HILL COUNTRY by Acayla Haile  I have long been interested in the plants of my Texas home. As a child, one of my favorite games involved gathering interesting looking plants and grinding them between two rocks and presenting them to my family as “medicine.” As I grew older my father used to point out plants to me and explain their uses as our family went on walks on our property in the Hill Country. He would later quiz me on their names. It is from him that I inherited my love of botany and gardening. There is nothing like going out to your garden and picking beans, peppers, and strawberries in a basket you wove out of basket grass gathered from the nearby creek. But it is the plants that grow wild that hold the most intrigue. The Hill Country is ecologically very diverse, with many plants and animals found nowhere else in the world, along with many very useful plants that have been used by the settlers and the Native Americans since ancient times. With a little knowledge they are still useful today. One of my favorites is the admittedly common pecan trees that grow in the bottoms. Wild pecans are generally smaller than the cultivated varieties, but sometimes you will find a tree of the Cherokee or Lipan varieties that produce larger nuts. I think the smaller wild varieties are more flavorful, and therefore worth the extra effort of cracking and peeling them. A mature pecan tree can produce up to two tons of pecans a year, and I feel like I could eat them all. I have loved gathering pecans as long as I remember, at my grandparents’ house in Quihi, or along the banks of the Medina River in Bandera. In fact, just last year my mother and father and I gathered nearly forty pounds of pecans in the space of a few hours. We have a special tool we use just for pecan picking—a twenty-fivefoot bamboo pole cut from a vacant lot we use to knock the pecans 293 loose onto a blanket laid out below to catch them. We keep pecans by the bucketful to crack in the wintertime. As productive as they are, it is no wonder they are Texas’ state tree. Cattails are another common plant with myriad uses that I remember being taught as a child. The roots of the cattail can be dug up and eaten; they are very starchy, with a texture a little like a potato. One must be very careful to cook them thoroughly first, as they can cause vomiting if eaten raw in large amounts, especially if you gathered them from an area of polluted water. A very interesting method for cattail preparation involves the seeds, which are laid out on a flat surface and lit while still attached to the fluff. The fluff burns off almost instantly, leaving the seeds separated and cooked in one simple step, ready to be eaten warm or ground into a flour, as it was often used by the pioneers. The fluff is very useful as tinder since it lights so easily. At the Folklife Festival in San Antonio I was shown how the pioneers dipped the cattails in wax to make long-burning candles. My sister and I came home every year with a cattail candle each. I have also been told that the fluff on the seedpod can be spun into thread and woven, or used for stuffing pillows or rag dolls. Cattail leaves and stalks are used for stiffer weaving, such as room partitions or chair caning. Another particularly useful plant I remember well from my early years is Mullein, also called skunk cabbage or lambs ear. A tea of mullein is most often used for coughs or sore throats by boiling the leaves for ten minutes or so. But don’t drink it just yet. The plant is covered with small hairs that should be strained before drinking. The bruised and slightly boiled leaves are applied directly to burns to soothe and help heal them. The Navaho used mullein tea to treat mental illness. The leaves and flowers produce a strong yellow dye that Roman women used to dye their hair, because in their society yellow hair was the ideal beauty. Like the cattail, the dried flower stalks were dipped in wax to make torches. I remember the large soft leaves as wonderful bedding and blankets...

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