BEVERAGE PLANTS 



after it has boiled at least a quarter of an hour, 

 sugar is added and it is drunk like tea. ... I was 

 told milk makes it much more agreeable to the taste. 

 This beverage restores strength, and it had that 

 effect, for I was very tired when I arrived." The 

 scarlet berries that cling like beads to the branches 

 in the autumn used to be dried and powdered for 

 use as a household spice, whence, obviously, the 

 name Wild Allspice sometimes given to the shrub. 



The warm, birchy flavor of the creeping Winter- 

 green (Gaultheria procumbens, L., the use of whose 

 berries was noted in the previous chapter) could 

 hardly have failed to attract attention to the plant 

 as a likely substitute for Chinese tea when the latter 

 was unobtainable; and one of its popular names, 

 Teaberry, indicates that that is what happened — an 

 infusion of the leaves being made. A pleasant and 

 wholesome drink may also be made from the foliage 

 of one of the Goldenrods — Solidago odora, Ait. 

 This is a slender, low-growing species with one- 

 sided panicles of flowers, not uncommon in dry or 

 sandy soil from New England to Texas and dis- 

 tinguished by an anise-like fragrance given off by 

 the minutely dotted leaves when bruised. A com- 

 mon name for it is Mountain Tea, and in some parts 

 of the country the gathering of the leaves to dry an-d 



147 



