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ry; it sounds impressive to me.
Two ships were sent out from England in 1602 with the express purpose of finding and filling the ships with sassafras for a ready and demanding English market. This expedition was well before the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies were established.
So, the first shipload to reward English investors in The New World was not tobacco as history has mistakenly told us; it was sassafras!
I satisfied my curiosity about the origin of the name of this fine tree. Sassafras is a French word given by early, 16th century explorers from that country in Florida. The French interpreted the Indian term for the wondrous tree as sassafras.
Besides the rich green of new spring foliage and the vivid autumn color, sassafras has deep blue fruits set in red receptacles. Flowers are sulphur yellow with the male tree putting on the best show because of its stamens; later only female trees produce the vividly colored fruit which birds find ready and ripe during fall migration.
The ‘-fras’ family puts on a good show at any time of the year. The sassafras tree is distinctly American and indigenous to the eastern part of the country from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. We are lucky to have it so common in the upper Virginia Piedmont.
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