Rattlesnake Master

When I first saw Rattlesnake Master ... it was in a southern Ohio prairie remnant ... I had no idea what it was. Not a clue. Granted, I didn't know as much about wildflowers then as I know now, not that I'm a know-it-all but let's face it, I've seen so much these last few years, I must have learned something, by rote if nothing else. Anyway, here's this prairie species with roundish, spiny-looking flowers, and leaves ... well, the leaves reminded me of Aloe leaves; in fact, that's how I described them to the local Dept. of Natural Resources guy, whose area of expertise were these very prairie remnants. He wasn't sure what I was describing, so off to the field guides I went.

Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium), it turned out, was a member of the Carrot Family (Apiaceae); this dangerous-looking, prickly thing was a cousin of carrots and parsley and fennel and Queen-Anne's Lace, all delicate, fringy things. My leaf description, it turned out, wasn't so outrageous. The specific yuccifolium was from the Greek, and meant yucca-leaves, and yucca leaves aren't so different from Aloe leaves, are they?

In Louisiana, Rattlesnake Master was also known as Merrye-Curvye. Samuel Touchstone, in his Herbal and Folk Medicine of Louisiana and Adjacent States wrote, "The only information I found on the name of the plant was that a 'Granny woman' with the name of Mary Curby brought the plant to the attention of local herb users. Not knowing any other name, the people called it the merrye curvye plant. Everyone having knowledge of this herb made a tea from the root. They used the tea to treat hives, whooping cough, measles and other throat complaints."

In 1790 Luigi Castiglioni wrote, "...this plant was pointed out to me by ... a Virginia physician ... as an excellent remedy for rattlesnake bite; and Mr. Clayton, in his Flora virginica, after having alluded to the aforementioned quality, adds that in the treatment of fevers it is on a par with Contrayerva." Now I don't know what Contrayerva is any more than I knew what Rattlesnake Master was, but it's probably another odds-and-ends thing.

Rattlesnake Master always struck me a little odd, its white balls of spiny-looking flowers turning bluish with age. It never seemed to belong with all the other late-summer prairie and open space species. But there it was, and

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