Sassafras

Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. The genus is distinguished by its aromatic properties, which have made the tree useful to humans. Sassafras trees grow from 9–35 m (30–115 ft) tall with many slender sympodial branches, and smooth, orange-brown bark or yellow bark. All parts of the plants are fragrant. The species are unusual in having three distinct leaf patterns on the same plant: unlobed oval, bilobed (mitten-shaped), and trilobed (three-pronged); the leaves are hardly ever five-lobed. Three-lobed leaves are more common in Sassafras tzumu and Sassafras randaiense than in their North American counterparts, although three-lobed leaves do sometimes occur on Sassafras albidum. The young leaves and twigs are quite mucilaginous, and produce a citrus-like scent when crushed. The tiny, yellow flowers are generally six-petaled; Sassafras albidum and Sassafras hesperia are dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate trees, while Sassafras tzumu and Sassafras randaiense have male and female flowers occurring on the same trees. The fruit is a drupe, blue-black when ripe. The largest known sassafras tree in the world is in Owensboro, Kentucky, and is over 100 feet high and 21 feet in circumference. The genus Sassafras was first described by the Bohemian botanist Jan Presl in 1825. The name 'sassafras', applied by the botanist Nicolas Monardes in 1569, comes from the French sassafras. Some sources claim it originates from the Latin saxifraga or saxifragus: 'stone-breaking'; saxum 'rock' + frangere 'to break'). Sassafras trees are not within the family Saxifragaceae. Early European colonists reported that the plant was called winauk by Native Americans in Delaware and Virginia and pauane by the Timucua. Native Americans distinguished between white sassafras and red sassafras, terms which referred to different parts of the same plant but with distinct colors and uses. Sassafras was known as fennel wood (German Fenchelholz) due to its distinctive aroma. The genus Sassafras includes four species, three extant and one extinct. Sassafras plants are endemic to North America and East Asia, with two species in each region that are distinguished by some important characteristics, including the frequency of three-lobed leaves (more frequent in East Asian species) and aspects of their sexual reproduction (North American species are dioecious). Taiwanese sassafras, Taiwan, is treated by some botanists in a distinct genus as Yushunia randaiensis (Hayata) Kamikoti, though this is not supported by recent genetic evidence, which shows Sassafras to be monophyletic. Many Lauraceae are aromatic, evergreen trees or shrubs adapted to high rainfall and humidity, but the genus Sassafras is deciduous. Deciduous sassafras trees lose all of their leaves for part of the year, depending on variations in rainfall. In deciduous tropical Lauraceae, leaf loss coincides with the dry season in tropical, subtropical and arid regions. In temperate climates, the dry season is due to the inability of the plant to absorb water available to it only in the form of ice.