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Booker T. Washington - Slave to School Teacher - Part 2 - Woodland Harvest

© Georgene A. Bramlage

Booker T. Washington, as an adult, wrote about calm and tranquility in nature. ...[G]o, for an hour or more...on Sunday afternoons in to the woods, where we can live for a while near the heart of nature, where no one can disturb or vex us, surrounded by the pure air, the trees, the shrubbery, the flowers, and the sweet fragrance that springs from a hundred plants, enjoying the chirp of the crickets and the songs of the birds. This is solid rest.

Perhaps Booker remembered the woods along the Jack-O-Lantern Branch, a small stream running along the east side of the plantation. Booker, because he was a boy, probably went into the woodland more than girls who were expected to stick close by their mothers and learn female work.

Young Booker did not go into the woods to take it easy and stroll idly about. He most certainly would have had another task to do - finding and picking wild plants and mushrooms to take back to his mother to cook.

When you visit the Booker T. Washington National Monument today, you will find the Jack-O-Lantern Branch Trail that loops 1 ½ miles along Jack-O-Lantern Branch, through a man-made field and then woods. You can find many of the same plants that Booker might have sought after. (Remember though, you, yourself, do not need these plants to eat. Please do not remove or disturb any plants; leave them where you find them.)

Here are just a few of the tasty treats Booker might have found:

The morel mushroom is the best of spring's harvest.

• Morel mushrooms, Morchella species, are very choice and edible fungi that thrive in damp woods during spring and early summer. They have a nutlike flavor when fried with a little butter. Perhaps, Booker's mother might have used a little lard saved from the autumn hog butchering.
  Marsh marigolds in their marshy habitat and up close.

• Marsh marigolds, Caltha palustris, are recognized by their shiny kidney-shaped leaves. These leaves could be cut off from the plant to take back and cook like spinach. Even if you thought you did not like spinach, the marsh marigold leaves tasted really good after a long gray winter with nothing green to eat.
  The May apple flower underneath the plant's leaves and the May apple fruit - often called custard apple

• Fruit from the little mayapple plant (custard apple or American mandrake), Podophyllum peltatum, ripened in early summer. The soft, yellow completely ripe fruits could be made into tasty pies that taste a little like lemon custard pies. Some slaves also used the poisonous leaves and roots of the mayapple plant for magic and medicine.

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