EDIBLE TUBERS, BULBS OR ROOTS 



cakes or fritters. " So, you see, the wilderness as 

 well as the town had its gastronomic delicacies, and 

 dallied with dyspepsia. The China-brier, sometimes 

 called Bull-brier, is a perennial woody vine of dry 

 thickets from Maryland to the Gulf of Mexico, 

 adorned in autumn with showy umbels of black ber- 

 ries not known to be edible. The whites have used 

 the knotty, tuberous roots as the basis of a home- 

 made rootbeer in association with molasses and 

 parched corn. 



Our waters, too, yield some native roots of 

 economic worth. Among these aquatic wildings per- 

 haps the commonest is the Arrowhead (Sagittaria 

 variabilis, Eng.), so called from the shape of its 

 leaves. It is found in swamps, ditches, ponds and 

 shallow waters very generally throughout North 

 America from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from 

 Canada to Mexico, flowering in summer with 3- 

 petaled white blossoms arranged in verticels of three. 

 All Indians, whether of the Atlantic Slope, the 

 Middle West or the Pacific Coast, have set great 

 store by the plant because of its starchy, white 

 tubers, somewhat resembling small potatoes, de- 

 veloped in autumn at the ends of the rootstocks. It 

 is nearly related to a cultivated vegetable of the 

 Chinese Sagittaria Sinensis, a native of Asia. 



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