8 ALASKA BOTANY 



utilization of any of the mosses appears to be known, and no 

 record exists of any use whatever being made of the related 

 liverworts. 



The Pteridophytes appear to be used more than any of the 

 lower cryptogams, though, as compared with the flowering 

 plants, they, too, are of but little direct economic value. Gor- 

 man l states that the natives of the southern part of Alaska cook 

 and eat, under the name of ahh, the rootstock or caudex of 

 Asfodium spinulosum dilatatum, which furnishes the first vege- 

 table food obtained by them in spring. In his manuscript on the 

 Lake Iliamna region he states that, under the name of uh-ton-ah, 

 the roots of what has been determined as Athyrium cyclosorum, 

 and possibly one or two other ferns, are similarly used in the 

 more northern country, and that, when boiled and the decoction 

 sweetened with sugar or molasses, they furnish the basis of a 

 fermented beverage, which, with the addition of flour, is further 

 used in the preparation of a distilled liquor, hoochinoo. The 

 same gentleman informs me that in southeastern Alaska a 

 cough medicine is made from a decoction of the rootstocks of 

 Poly-podium falcatum, and he has further recorded 2 that in the 

 same district one of the club mosses, Lyc&podium selago^ is 

 chewed and the juice swallowed as a means of producing in- 

 toxication. Walpole notes on the label of another species of 

 club moss, L. annotinum, collected in 1901 at Mary's Igloo, 

 on the Kuzitrin River, that it is used as a wick for lamps in 

 which seal-oil is burned ; and, on the authority of Lieutenant 

 Emmons, Mr. Coville tells me that the dark rootstocks of one 

 of the horsetails, Equisetum -palustre, are used by the coast In- 

 dians as basket material, a use also mentioned by Mr. Gorman 

 for an Equisetum called chi-chi-yul-kuth-a, in his manuscript on 

 the Lake Iliamna region, his collection (242) representing E. 

 palustre and E. sylvaticum. 



The direct utilization of the lower groups of plants as here 

 recorded is relatively unimportant, and it is improbable that any 

 very important uses of these plants remain to be ascertained by 

 white men, though a traveler associating with the natives at any 



^ittonia, 3 : 78. 1896. See also Clute, Our Ferns, 146. 1901. 

 2 Pittonia, 3: 80. 1896. 



