Cryptogamic botany / by J. Cardot [and others].

Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Cryptogamic botany / by J. Cardot [and others]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    use as food, the Alaskan algse are recorded as having formerly- furnished fish-lines, for which knotted stipes of the giant kelp, Nereocystis friafus^ are said by GrinnelP and Mertens^ to have been used, the species being referred to by Mertens under the name Fucus liitkeanus. The latter writer also speaks of the hollow stems of the same kelp as used for siphoning water out of a bidarka, a trick no doubt learned from or practiced by the Russians. Few observations have been recorded on the use of fungi by the natives of Alaska, and no very important use appears to be made by them of any plant of this group. Though the damp woods and fern-covered hillsides of the southern and eastern part of the country afford good conditions for the growth of pileate species, the larger or more fleshy of which are usually called mushrooms or toadstools, no evidence is at hand showing that they are used for food by the aborigines. Though it is probable that, as in their own country, the Russians eat a variety of these plants, only one reference has been found to such use being made by them of the Alaskan species, namely, a statement by Kellogg ^ showing that he found the greatest luxury of one of the Russian villages to be pickled mushrooms, which he de- termined as ‘Aga^'icus mutabilis.^ Mr. Coville observed one of the bracket fungi, Fomes tinctorius^ in use by the Tlinkits of Sitka, especially the women, under the name tsakwM, for black- ening their faces as a protection against sunburn, the fungus being charred on one side and used as a burnt cork is used in making up for the stage, the resulting color containing often a shade of red from the unburnt part of the fungus. Another species of the same genus, since determined as F. igniarius^ is mentioned by Nelson^ as used in the Yukon region for the production of ashes which are mixed with shredded tobacco for chewing. In the manuscript of a paper by Mr. M. W. Gor- man, on the natives of the Lake Iliamna region and the plants * Harriman Alaska Expedition, i ; 138-139. 1901. ^Linnsea, 4: 48. 1829. 3 A. Kellogg, Report of the botany of the voyage of the United States steamer Lincoln^ etc., U. S. State and Treasury Departments, House Ex. Doc. no. 177, Second Session, Fortieth Congress, Russian America, 218. 1868. ‘Ann. Rept. Bureau Amer. Ethnology, 18: 271. Jig. 1899.
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