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.

Overview

Name

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"). 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, which terms referred to the same plant but to different parts of the plant with distinct colors and uses. Sassafras was known as fennel wood (German fenchelholz) due to its distinctive aroma.

Description

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 occurs sassafras albidum. The young leaves and twigs are quite mucilaginous, and produce a citrus-like scent when crushed. The tiny, yellow flowers are five-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.

Sassafras (disambiguation)

Sassafras is a genus of three species of trees native to North America and Asia.

Sassafras may also refer to:

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Sassafras (horse)

Sassafras (1967–1988) was a French Champion Thoroughbred racehorse.

Owned by Arpad Plesch he was trained by Francois Mathet and ridden in most of his races by Yves Saint-Martin. He was the champion 3-year-old colt in France, 1970. Sassafrás won six races out of 11 starts: the Prix de la Bresbe, the Prix Androcles, the Prix La Force, the Prix Royal-Oak, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (Fr-I), and the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) (Fr-I).

He also took 2nd Place in the Prix Lagrange and 3rd Place in the Prix Lupin. He sensationally upset the English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe by a rapidly narrowing head in 1970.

Sent initially to the Ballylinch Stud at Thomastown in County Kilkenny, Ireland, Sassafras was the sire of the winners over 72 races. Sassafras sired Galway Bay who was a stakes winner in Great Britain and Australia before becoming the sire of stakes winners. He was then exported to the United States for stud duty.

Sassafras died in 1988 and is buried at Pillar Stud in Lexington, Kentucky.