USEFUL WILD PLANTS 



make a palatable vegetable, if boiled, and serve as 

 a succulent side-dish to the camper's usually 

 monotonous dry diet. 



On the Southeastern rim of our country from 

 North Carolina to Florida, a common tree is the Cab- 

 bage Palmetto (Sabal Palmetto, R. & S.), which 

 South Carolina has adopted as so peculiarly her 

 own that she is known as the Palmetto State. It is 

 a palm of much the general look of the California 

 Fan Palm, though it never attains so great a height 

 as the latter often does. All palms grow by the de- 

 velopment of a central, terminal leaf -bud, and this in 

 some species the Palmetto is one is turned to ac- 

 count as an edible, being popularly known as a 

 " cabbage. " When cooked, the Palmetto cabbage is 

 a tender, succulent vegetable, though the harvest- 

 ing of the buds is a wasteful practice, unless it is 

 desired to clear the land, as cutting them out kills 

 the trees. 



We have it on the authority of Holy Writ that 

 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, foregathered for 

 a season with the beasts of the field and ate grass 

 as oxen, finding it, it is to be assumed, a sustain- 

 ing ration. The Indians of California, curiously 

 enough, long ago acquired and maintained more per- 

 sistently than the royal Babylonian a similar habit 



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