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| WELCOME WEATHER |
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| CAMP DINNER |
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| ANDY AND THE CULVER'S ROOT |
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| CULVER'S ROOT FLOWER BRANCHED FLOWER HEAD |
Wednesday, 8:30 AM. 71 degrees F, wind N, calm at present. The humidity is 95% after a night of terrific thunder storms which dumped 2.5” on desert-dry Bayfield. The barometer predicts more rain, which reminds me that we just passed the 70th anniversary of the great Bayfield flood of 1942 which devastated the community with 8” of rain in a few hours. Let’s hope we aren’t in for something like that, although there is excellent tree cover in the surrounding hills and the ravines are now well vegetated and stabilized, a far different environment from earlier times.
We went to Andy and Judy’s yesterday evening for camp dinner with their visiting family; Scot, Libby, Tyler, Luke and Tyler’s friend Kirron, a fine Irish American lad. The weather cooperated, the temperature was pleasant and the insects few.
Andy and I walked some of the trails, with Buddy running furiously around us. We came across a large field of Culver’s root, Veronicastrum virginicum, in the family Scrophulariaceae. It is a tall plant with whorled leaves and a very distinctive compound, banched flower head, native to open woodlands and prairies. The woodland Indian tribes used it medicinally as a tonic and physic, among other uses. I see some evidence that it was also used by early settlers for somewhat the same purposes. It is also purported to be a liver stimulant. The fresh roots are reported to be a violent laxative, and such were much used in early America as diets were very poor. The common name is probably that of an early doctor or herbal healer who was a proponent of its use.
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