RE: Missing Raphides

In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001  2:43:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Don Burns"<donburns@macconnect.com> writes:

> 
> > The plant juices that I have come in contact with are from freshly cut material,
> not dried. This might suggest to you that drying your material is destroying
> the raphides?? 

Ah!  The experiments of the late Euell Gibbons!  Having read reports to the effect that Native Americans ate the tuberous root of Arisaema triphylla, he tested the possibility.  Like many aroids, this plant is painfully irritant to the mucous membranes when raw.  Gibbons found that no amount of boiling was effective, the root remaining painfully irritant; but, having sliced the roots thinly and drying them six months in the attic, he found they were, indeed, edible after such a treatment.  He later had the same results with Symplocos foetidus.

Jason Hernandez
Naturalist-at-Large
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