[Sca-cooks] OOP Question -Sassafras

[otsisto]

This sound about right. I have heard that there is a variety of sassafras in
Mexico eastern side. Read somewhere that sassafras was one of the first
plants introduced to the Spanish and English explorers.
And somewhere I read that a variety of Sassafras may have been confused with
cinnamon.

Lyse

-----Original Message-----
The native range of sassafras is roughly that of the Eastern hardwood
forest, from the Canadian border into northern Florida forming a roughly V
shape reagion across the midwest and south with the point in eastern
Oklahoma.  The westernmost extent of the Eastern hardwood forest can be
found at what used to be Platt National Park in Sulphur, OK.

The Spanish landed 1,500 colonists in the Pensacola area in 1559, who moved
to Port Royal Sound (later part of the English colony of South Carolina) due
to hostilities with the native tribes.  This is in the southernmost extent
of Sassafras albidum and 15 years prior to the initial publication of
Historia Medical.  I haven't chased the actual publication history of
sassafras, but I would suspect this colony is the beginning of the European
use of the plant.  Until somebody checks, take this as speculation.

Bear