Last Saturday was a glorious fall day, and I had the good fortune to spend the several hours with eight other Gloucester Master Gardeners at beautiful Machicomoco State Park for the Indigenous Peoples Celebration. Our primary goal was to educate visitors about native florae that were used as medicine by the local tribes of Coastal Virginia.

Many of the plants that were used as medicine are also good sources of nutrition. Sassafras (Sassafras albidum), pawpaw (Asimina triloba), and persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) are three examples of trees that provided nutrition as well as medicine to local tribes. The colonists learned how to use the various parts of these trees and other native plants to battle illness and infection and to supplement their diets.

The leaves, bark, and roots of the sassafras tree were used for centuries before the colonists arrived and built Jamestown. Sassafras was prized by early colonists for its medicinal properties, and the leaves, roots and, bark were e...