BEVERAGE PLANTS 



Long's expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1819-20 

 records that while in winter camp on the Missouri 

 River near Council Bkiffs, the party substituted 

 these seeds for coffee and found the beverage both 

 palatable and wholesome. Thomas Nuttall, the 

 botanist, who botanized the following year around 

 the mouth of the Ohio River, testifies to tlie agree- 

 ableness of the parched seeds as an ai'ticle of diet, 

 but thought that as a substitute for coffee they were 

 '^greatly inferior to cichorium." 



Cichorium is the botanists' way of saying Chicory, 

 the plant that has been referred to already as pro- 

 ducing leaves useful as a salad. Its root has had a 

 rather bad name as an adulterant of coffee, in which 

 delusive form it has perhaps entered more human 

 stomachs than the human mind is aware of. As a 

 drink in itself, sailing under its own colors. Chicory 

 is not a bad drink, the root being first roasted and 

 ground. It is rather surprising, by the way, to 

 learn that a palatable beverage is possible from 

 steeping the needles .of the Hemlock tree {Tsuga 

 Canadensis, Carr.) — which is not to be confused with 

 the poisonous herb that Socrates died of. Hemlock 

 tea is, or at least used to be, a favorite drink of the 

 eastern lumbermen, and I have myself drunk it 



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