The sassafras came back. Gallery of red and yellow sassafras. Life resumes after the logging.

    A gallery of fall 'fras

Red and Yellow Sassafras At the Metacomet.

Sassafras up close. Metacomet.

Sassafras is most easily spotted in the fall.

Red sassafras at the Metacomet.

Sassafras lovers, rejoice.  The loggers did their thinning and clear-cutting, and the sassafras came back. We were assured that the trucks and mess (some still there) were for the woods' own good at our local high reservoir trail, and for two years some of us grieved.  Now, come and enjoy.  I understand that the red sassafras is more fragrant than the yellow, but have not noticed that yet.  Perhaps in the spring.

Metacomet trail, segment at Reservoir 6.

The trail here, overall is named for the chief Metacomet, sachem or chief of the Wampanoag tribe, who featured in King Philip's War, see http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/battleswars16011800/p/King-Philips-War-1675-1676.htm

Red sassafras, Reservoir 6, West Hartford CT

Yellow sassafras, Reservoir 6, West Hartford CT

Red and yellow sassafras, Metacomet

The Metacomet is part of an old Indian trail  see http://newenglandtrail.org/get-on-the-trail/ct-net-section-17-metacomet-trail.  The trail system now extends some 215 miles.  See http://amcberkshire.org/netmm/

qq

This site is not alone in bewailing the stupid stuff done in banning sassafras.  See http://www.eattheweeds.com/sassafras-root-beer-rat-killer/  You can still make your own rootbeer, see https://byo.com/stories/issue/item/563-down-to-the-root-make-your-own-root-beer/  Meanwhile, write your congresspeople who, themselves, clearly, need this as the national governing drink. 

Some sassafras grows tall.

For tall, single trunk sassafras, prune out the shoots.

Oxytocin effect in sassafras? Why not let nature's inexpensive source help people feel good, meet pain sensibly, meet many needs?

Sassafras. Hospitality tea. Steep peeled, tender roots. Here, on the Metacomet, in fall.

Suddenly a search for oxytocin in sassafras, simple enough, turns up site after site.  Would a benign chemist please stand up and assess in an objective way whether this is so, and whether someone should start the process for reassessing the ban on sassafras.  Like marijuana, sassafras is nature itself.  Safeguards can be put in place to see that underage or other vulnerables have extremely restricted access to it.  Is sassafras so much worse, more of a threat (to whom?) that it is given prohibition. And based (check this as well) on flawed research that used its effect on rodents as the measure of ill effects on humans, when the rodents and sassafras are in an allelopathic relationship.  Sassafras defends itself by being not benign as to rodents, beavers who eat it, and the like.

Does sensible caution in use of any substance have to mean  prohibition, after flawed testing in particular, so this "hospitality tea" as used for centuries by indigenous peoples, is unavailable to adults? To feel good, or a small  buzz (or to abuse), we already have alcohol, but alcohol that takes lots of processing and is expensive.  Instead, publicize sassafras tea, other uses.

Do your own search.  Oxytocin and sassafras, oxytocin in sassafras, you pick.  I only make a hobby of spotting it in public places. 

As a sassafras-spotter, I am happy to announce that the logging at our local reservoir, up the ridge here, did not eradicate the sassafras.  Shoots, small understory, coming up -- both the yellow, which here is common; and the red, that is more rare.  Is the yellow or red, the color of the leaves turning in autumn, a function of exposure to sunlight?  Or are they different sorts.  Taking pictures as we speak.

Peyote, sassafras, marijuana, some help in feeling good in a politically toxic world, go back to nature.  This is an area, where the only competition is the rich and corrupted drug companies, where natural use of natural substances should be left to the people.  Advertise not the fancy drugs, but how to use nature, wisely.

We have been educated never to eat wild mushrooms.  Pretty, aren't they? But possibly toxic. We can educate about sassafras.

Metacomet. Mushrooms. What kind?