General Details
Dakota Name:
Taćaƞhutka śa
Scientific Name:
Ceanothus americanus
Alternate Names:
Redroot, Indian tea, wild snowball, snowbrush, and soapbloom
Height:
Grows 3 feet
Flowers:
Stalked clusters of numerous white flowers emerge from upper leaves. Elongated, rounded, with pleasant
fragrance. Bloom for about a month during early summer
Fruit:
After flowering, three 1/4 inch lobed fruits form containing a smooth coated, elliptical, brown seed
Habitat:
Sandy soils of open woodlands and prairies, and rocky hillsides
Plant Characteristics
A shrubby, upright, native perennial that will send up multiple stems. Its stems are light green and covered with fine white hairs which become woody with age in the absence of fire or
browsing by wildlife. Leaves are alternate and broadly oblong-oval, up to 3 inches long and 2 inches wide. The leaf margins are smooth to finely serrated.
Dakota Cultural Use
The leaves were used by all the tribes to make a drink like tea. The taste is something like that of the Asiatic tea and is much better than that of the South American yerba mate. On the buffalo hunt when timber was scarce, the great gnarled woody roots of this shrub, often much larger than the part above ground, were used for fuel.