208 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 219. 



nature of the soil, and the extension of the decay upward 

 through the trunks of the trees. 



Referring to the perfect soundness of tlie Arbor-vitae trees 

 of nortli-eastern Maine, previously alluded to by me, an item 

 caught my eye in a recent copy of a Houlton (Maine) news- 

 paper, as follows: "One of Aroostook's giant Cedars was 

 cut by Geo. Humphrey's men at Thomas Taylor & Son's 

 camp, on Cary Brook, last week. This Cedar was four feet 

 on the stump, sixty-two feet long and ten inches in diameter 

 at the top end — making 1,491 feet of inch-lumber." 



Newport, vt. T. H. Hoskhis. 



Coontie and Conte. 



THE article in Garden and Forest, of February 3d, 1892, 

 on Smilax Pseudo-China, recalls an interesting bit of his- 

 tory connected with the botany of the south, which also brings 

 forcibly to mind the difficulties in identifying a plant known 

 only by a common name. I refer to the Coontie of the Florida 

 Indians, the aboriginal name of Zamia integrifolia, the plant 

 from which Florida Arrowroot is obtained. At first S. Pseudo- 

 China, or some other species of Smilax, was supposed to be 

 the Coontie, or Coontia, of the Indians. Dr. William Baldwin, 

 one of the early investigators of the botany of Georgia and 

 Florida, held this opinion. From 1812 to 1817 he was in this 

 region collecting plants, and he seems to have been the first 

 to identify Coontia with Zamia. Dr. Henry Muehlenberg, his 

 constant correspondent, shared these doubts about the Coon- 

 tia, or Bread-plant, of the Seminoles. This correspondence 

 was publishedby Dr. William Darlington, in Reliqicice Baldvjini- 

 ancs, and in a letter dated June 18th, 1812, Muehlenberg asks 

 Dr. Baldwin, " What is the real Coontie of the Indians ? Is it 

 Smilax laurifolia, or do you find it figured in Catesby or else- 

 where?" Baldwin replies: "The root which furnishes the 

 Coontia of the Creeks is certainly Smilax." 



Five years later, after Dr. Muehlenberg's death, he found the 

 real Coonda south of St. Augustine, and in 1817 he writes to 

 Darlington : " Here, in a thin sandy hammock of small Live 

 Oaks, Cabbage and San Palmettoes, I had the gratification to 

 find the ' Wild Sago,' or Coontia, of the Seminoles, and to as- 

 sign it its place in the sexual system — Dioicia, Polyandria, 

 natural order Palmse. I have no books with me to refer to, 

 but it is probably a new genus, approaching very closely in 

 habit to the real Sago family (Cycas). At supper I had the 

 pleasure to eat the bread prepared from the large tuberous 

 root of this plant. ... I have no hesitation in saying that it 

 . will be found among the most important of our Esculentia." 

 A few days later he writes : " I now find that my Coontia, or 

 Wild Sago, is nothing more nor less than Zamia pumila " — 

 that is, Z. integrifolia, Willd. Dr. Baldwin therefore traced the 

 Coontia of the Seminoles, whatever may have been that of the 

 Creeks, to Z. integrifolia. 



Referring to Bartram's Travels (English edidon, page 160), 

 and the only place where much is said of it, there is no 

 allusion to its use as food, but to its beauty alone. As Bartram 

 was pardcular in his observations, this seems strange, and may 

 indicate that he was unacquainted with such a use of Zamia. 

 Subsequently he went to an Indian village, perhaps not far from 

 Appalachee Bay, and in middle Florida. Here he was enter- 

 tained by the Indians, and partook of a dish which he calls 

 conte (contee in the table of contents), and of which he writes 

 (ibid., 239) quite minutely : " Early in the morning our chief in- 

 vited me with him to take a final leave of the White King. We 

 were graciously received and treated with the utmost civility and 

 hospitality ; there was a noble entertainment and repast provided 

 against our arrival, consisting of bear's ribs, venison, varieties 

 of fish, roasted turkeys, hot corn-cakes, and a very agreeable 

 cooling sort of jelly, which they call conte ; this is prepared 

 from the root of the China-brier (Smilax pseudo-China ; S. aspera, 

 fructu nigro, radice nodosa, magna, lasvi, farinacea ; Sloan, 

 Nat. Hist. Am., i., p. 231, t. 143, f. i; habitat Jamaica, Virginia, 

 Carolina and Florida). They chop the roots in pieces, which 

 are afterward well pounded in a wooden mortar, then being 

 mixed with clean water in a tray or trough, they strain it 

 through baskets ; the sediment, which settles to the bottom of 

 the second vessel, is afterward dried in the open air, and is 

 then a very fine reddish flour or meal ; a small quantity of this 

 mixed with warm water and sweetened with honey, when cool 

 becomes a beautiful, delicious jelly, very nourishing and 

 wholesome. Theyalso mix it with fine corn-flour, which be- 

 ing fried in fresh bear's-oil makes very good hot cakes or 

 fritters." 



A quesdon of interest is suggested by this quotadon, whether 

 this agreeable food, conte, of these Indians (called Lower 

 Creeks as well as Seminoles by Bartram) is the same as the 



coontia of the Creeks and Seminoles mentioned in the letters 

 of Muehlenberg and Baldwin. There is a similarity in the 

 names, which may be a matter of etymology — of words com- 

 ing from the same root and indicating a food-product of anala- 

 gous use. But this does not necessarily make them identical. 

 Though not, perhaps, too far north for the growth of Zamia (if 

 the conte was derived from a local plant), since Bartram on 

 the third day of his return from this village to the St. John's 

 speaks of gathering seeds of Zamia, it would hardly seem that 

 one mendoning Smilax so definitely as the source of conte 

 would confound it with another plant. Then he must have 

 been well acquainted with S. Pseudo-China, which he mentions 

 elsewhere, and which was a common plant from New Jersey 

 to the Gulf of Mexico, a region through which he passed more 

 than once. 



Is there, then, in the large tuberous roots of this Smilax a 

 food worthy of the attention of those in quest of new native 

 sources of food-supply ? How valuable might it be if used as 

 an esculent, and improved by cultivation like most of the vege- 

 tables which come to our tables. Animals are well aware of 

 its edible properties, for pigs root up the groundfor the tubers, 

 a fact also noticed by Pursh in his Flora. Its useful qualities 

 were also known to other botanists. Elliott, in his Sketch of 

 the Botany of South Carolma and Georgia, does not mention it 

 as an esculent, but says of if: " This species forms the basis of 

 many ' diet drinks ' among the ' unlicensed faculty.' From the 

 roots, with Indian corn, sassafras and molasses, the negroes 

 manufacture a very pleasant beer." Rafinesque is more ex- 

 plicit. In his Medical Flora he says of Smilax: " All more or 

 less equivalent. S. Sarsaparilla, best known ; S. Pseudo- 

 China, largest roots, extend one hundred feet in damp soils, 

 forming clusters. Much used by the southern Indians for 

 food, mush, and the fecula is a red-brown flour. Good beer 

 made with sassafras and molasses purifies the blood. Shoots 

 eaten like asparagus. S. caduca, laurifolia, tamnoides, etc., 

 equally used." Having mentioned their medical properties, 

 he concludes : "Properties reside in the bark containing paril- 

 line, fecula, mucus, albumen. The centre is pure fecula, 

 inert, esculent." 



Englewood, Chicago, 111. E. J. Htll. 



Foreign Correspondence. 

 London Letter. 



THE meetings of the Royal Florticultural Society in April 

 and May are invariably of more than ordinary inter- 

 est. The last one was remarkable for the numerous exam- 

 ples of well-flovvered specimens and rare Orchids, Anthu- 

 riums, Hippeastrums and other stove-plants, hard-wooded 

 greenhouse-plants and hardy flowers. The Orchids in- 

 cluded a group of the noble Dendrobium Phalsenopsis, var. 

 Schroederianum, from Messrs. Sander & Co., showing even 

 greater variety in color than we have hitherto seen, besides 

 extraordinary size and vigor of growth. Already one can 

 see that this Dendrobium promises to be one of the very 

 best of tropical Orchids. From the same firm came plants- 

 in flower of the new Cypripedium Chamberlainianum, which 

 was unanimously awarded a first-class certificate by the 

 Orchid committee. It is rich in color, peculiar in form, 

 and, while scarcely deserving to be placed among the very 

 best of the Cypripediums, it can hardly fail to rank high as 

 a garden plant if it only proves amenable to ordinary 

 cultivation. Masdevallias included the pretty hybrid M. 

 Courtauldiana, which is now flowering at Kew, and the rare 

 little M. Wendlandiana, interesting as being the only known 

 tropical species of Masdevallia. At Kew it grows and flow- 

 ers freely in the East India-house. Messrs. Hugh Low & 

 Co. contributed a group of choice Orchids, chiefly Cat- 

 tleyas, Odontoglossums and Vandas. They also sent the 

 delightful little Angrsecum fastuosum, the large A. sesqui- 

 pedale, beautiful though somewhat out of season, and the 

 dainty little Saccolabium bellinum, which is a specialty at 

 the Clapton Nurseries. Messrs. B. S. Williams & Son sent 

 numerous Vandas, Dendrobium Wardianum and the large- 

 floweied variety of Cochlioda vulcanica, recently intro- 

 duced and named grandiflora. 



The importance of these periodical exhibitions held by 

 the Royal Horticultural Society in London is testified to 

 by the frequent contributions which come from Continental 



