This is a native plant.

This plant can be found all the way from Newfoundland down to Maryland. (If you don't know where I am talking about , GO LOOK AT A MAP!!!) It grows in poor, sandy soils and you will find it along the seashores many times. It is also inland. A friend's farm in Woodstock, CT has a lovely stand of it I want to photograph for you.

 

All parts of this plant are aromatic (make a nice smell) when crushed and the waxy gray berries are gathered and used to make bayberry candles. (See below for more on this!)

 

Besides its well known use for candles the Bayberry has medicinal qualities long exploted by Native Americans. The bark and the roots were used to make an astringent, a tonic and a stimulant. The bark was used for diarrhea and dysentery; the decoction used in an enema. It was also used as a wash for sores, boils and carbuncles. Powdered, the bark could be dusted on wounds. The bark off the roots was made into an astringent. It was used in mouthwashes. Before the days when dentists knew how to avoid causing you pain, anything that promoted a healthy mouth was highly prized!

The Bayberry blooms early in May, before the leaves are fully out, so you have to be observant to catch them doing their thing.

The tiny flowers develop into these little gray waxy berries.
This picture is a bit bigger than real life. It takes an awful lot of them to produce enough bayberry wax to be useful! You boil the berries to melt their wax coating off the seed, then cool the water and pick off the sheet of wax which will be floating at the top. About 100 pounds of berries are needed to boil off a scant 10 pounds of the fragrant vegetable wax.

Information on candle making..

Study Pointers:

• Gathering the bayberries was often work for children in Colonial times.
  Children were expected to act like little grown-ups back then.....doing whatever work they could understand and their smaller muscles would allow. Childhood, as a time for going to school, play and goofing around, is a new invention.
  Children's work was an important part of the families survival. Parents hoped to have many children to help make life easier for everyone in the family. By the time you were 4 years old you would be doing useful and necessary tasks.
  You might want to explore the life of children in Colonial times by going HERE.

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