[stickman]

I think I found A new favorite. It carves well and there a bunch of it around. It also has some unique color just under the bark that you could incorporate into your work. the only problem is I haven't seen very many large trees so bigger pieces might be out of luck.It also holds detail very well.

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

I have a sassafras stick for a walking stick....carved a ducks head on top, call it "sufferin sassafras" LOL

[Kenny_S]

Roots make great tea. AH, clean them first. Grity if you don't and unclean ones changes the flavor. hehehehehehehehe.
Great to smoke meat with.

[Lynn O. Doughty]

I've been clearing fence rows and have some really nice 6-10" logs of that stuff. Very light wood so doubt if it would be good for much other than burning or making a cuppa as Kenny suggests. Does make good tea!

[brian bailey]

Sassafras doesn't grow in my area, but go 35 miles north of me, it grows near Lake Ontario.

The logger that I deal with says there are pockets of sassafras growing 3 to 4 miles inland of the lake. Some of the trees get quite big. I've gotten logs from him that are 16 inches in diameter.

It's a nice furniture wood and it sure smells good. I keep a 2x4 of it handy and every so often I'll take a slice off it with the pocket knife just for the aroma.


http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics...as/albidum.htm

[Paul_Guraedy]

Sassafras is an interesting tree.

The roots were, until sometime in the 1950’s, the main ingredient and gives the name to root beer. The USDA outlawed its use, so it was replaced with some man-made, taste-like, chemical! We, in much of the south, still use the roots to brew sassafras tea.

The wood is wonderful for woodworking and carving. I made a wooden spoon for my wife around 1990 that she is still using.

Sassafras has three different shaped leaves on each tree (from single to those with two and three lobes). But, we natives of the Bayou State probably use sassafras more than anyone else. Dried sassafras leaves are the spice that we call Gumbo Filé and flavors, as well as thickens, one of our most well-known dishes.

Usually, the sassafras is more shrub than tree. I did pay a visit, and homage I suppose, to the largest of this species that, I hope, still stands in Owensboro, KY. That monster was at least 6 feet in diameter and about 60 feet tall.

[brian bailey]

Hey Paul,

That sassafras tree is still in the registry, but, it says the last measurement was taken in 1954. Interesting.

http://www.americanforests.org/resou...hp?details=697

[Thomp]

Although i live in an area where sasifrass is suppose to be abundant, i havent ever remembered seeing any here in central la,
ive scraped and smelled lots of limbs and they dont smell like rootbeer.. its got a leaf much like mulburry correct?

but remembering from a kid dad showed me a tree in alabama across the road from my grandfathers house, we dug some roots and i remember saying rootbeer, dad said there poision if you get to much of them after he saw me with a shirt pocket full of them as i was chewing one,
works great as a exlax,....

[Paul_Guraedy]

Thomp, I was raised outside Pineville, there in central Louisiana. Sassafras grows mainly in old abandoned fields and along the sides of dirt roads. Well, now that I think about it, we looked for it mainly along dirt roads with embankments because the roots were easier to dig there.

The roots are what smell like root beer. It is an unusual tree that can have different shaped leaves on the same plant. They can vary from three lobes (kinda like a pitchfork with wide tines), to having two lobes (one branching out from either side of the main one), to just a leaf with only one point.

I know sassafras tea is used mainly in the spring as a tonic. Although I love root beer, I drank the tea mainly because of the novelty of digging the roots and brewing the stuff. It smelled wonderful, but, I never drank enough to get the cathartic effect.

[windsong]

Hi Everyone
I work in Prestionburg Ky. and there is a graveyard next to my job in it there is two sassafras tree that measure 8'3'' around thay have about 16' feet of clear log before the first limbs.Some day maybe the wind will blow them down and you know i will have to help clean them up Ha.Ha.Please tell me how you make the tea.
Thanks
Vic.