Before DEET: How Pioneers Fought Biting Insects
Welcome! My name is Brandy McDaniel and I probably have the oddest life goal of anyone you will meet. I want to know the name, history, and use of every single plant I see in Texas and Oklahoma… in cultivation / commerce and in the wild. For this article, we will meet four simple, common plants used as daily staples in pioneer medicine cabinets.
Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
American beautyberry can be found in the wild across the entire south. It is native from Virginia to Texas. If you go hiking in the woods, you will see a large shrub with loose arching canes and magenta purple berry clusters evenly spaced along the branches. It is fairly common in the wild and is commercially sold as one of our star landscape plants.
But that’s the boring stuff. Here’s the useful stuff.
My family would take handfuls of the leaves and stuff them under the yokes of oxen or mules to keep bugs from biting them as they worked. Chemical analysis showed that it’s as, if not more, potent than DEET. Beautyberry is exceptionally good at repelling mosquitoes, biting flies, chiggers, fleas, some ticks, and fire ants! Seriously! We have something that works against fire ants.
Note that it is the volatile oils in the leaves that work. So if you boil or cook them in any way, you’re getting rid of the useful chemicals. Put the leaves through a food processor and make a tincture, by submerging the damaged leaves in alcohol.
Now speaking from experience, we tried this and the only thing it didn’t work on was seed ticks. I would add lantana or ragweed to the tincture to provide complete protection. And as a bonus, if you use lantana, it will make any bites you have already gotten go away.
Lantana (Lantana camara)
The next plant to discuss is our lovely lantana. Some of you will know there’s more than one kind, but did you know there’s around 150 species? They’ve got a whole lot of cousins that we recognize, but the active ingredients are common across the whole family.
This pretty, common flower was one of the cornerstones of my grandmother’s medicine cabinet. Allow me to tell you a story from around 100 years ago in southwest Oklahoma.
A man had gone hunting for supper with his son and had shot a possum. The boy went to go pick it up, but unfortunately, it wasn’t dead yet. It swung around and chewed all the way from his hand to his shoulder. Deep bites, with chunks of ripped and missing flesh. My uncle Grant said they had ridden up long after dark, but he and mama could still remember the blood still dripping off the side of the horse.
Now, one thing about possum bites is that they get infected fast. My uncle Grant ran in the house for my grandmother, Dolly. She directed my aunt Rene to go get a double handful of lantana leaves and throw it in a pot of boiling water, then pull it off the fire. Grandma and great grandma washed the wounds with the lantana water, coated the whole arm in honey, then wrapped in clean white linen.
And he was fine. Amazingly it never became infected, healed well, and he retained full use of his arm. He was a family friend into my childhood and would play cards regularly with my mom and my uncle. I remember the first time I asked about where he got his scars on his arm and he laughed and told me my grandma saved his life.
Of course, many people know about honey’s medicinal use. It has been used since ancient Egypt as wound dressing, and is still being used today in medical grade honey for wounds that will not heal. Antibacterial, antimicrobial, it’s the only food that will never go bad as long as it’s properly sealed. But that’s an article for another day. What did the lantana do?
Lantana is an external only medicine. It contains a numbing agent to take the itch and sting out of any bites and stings. Also with healing properties, it helps heal burns, scrapes, cuts, bites. And when you make a tincture out of the leaves, it repels mosquitoes especially well.
Next time you get a mosquito bite, grab a fresh lantana leaf, wad it up between your fingers, and crush it into the bite so you leave a little green stain. It will take away the itch and the welt.
Giant Ragweed (Ambrosia trifida)
Source: Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Yes, ragweed. I don’t know which one is worse… cedar fever during cedar pollen season in late winter, or hay fever from ragweed in the fall. There’s a whole family of ragweed species with the family name of Ambrosia. Fun fact: “food of the gods” is due to the wind pollination quality. Giant ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) grows just about anywhere that’s disturbed and neglected… in ditches, fence rows, on the side of the road. A distant relative of sunflowers, it can reach heights from 3′ to 16′ tall in a single season.
Ragweed was another staple in my grandparents’ medicine cabinet. Along with beautyberry, ragweed was one of the leaves stuffed under the yoke on the mules or oxen to keep the bugs off while they worked. Like lantana, it also can be rolled into a ball and crushed to relieve insect stings and bites. I must have been a sight coming in the house covered in leaf smeared bug bites as a child.
Caches containing extraordinarily large seeds have been found in burial mounds across the Eastern Woodlands cultural area of Native Americans. Besides being an oily seed crop, the young leaves have a good, herbal flavor after blanching in boiling water for a few minutes. The flowers have a unique herbal nutty flavor after blanching and are good with scrambled eggs. Blanch the male flowers for a minute and dehydrate to deploy as a flavorful ingredient in seed crackers. Historical records from Cherokee, Lakota, and Iroquois record it as a remedy for insect stings, bites, hives, fever, pneumonia and diarrhea.
Ragweed continues to be following a step behind. Anywhere we disturb the landscape, ragweed finds a home. A former domesticated partner, well loved and tended, now a common weed that still finds a way to live in our shadow. Who knows what the future may bring for an old companion. Biomass carbon capture? Building materials from the strong sturdy fibers? One thing is for certain, it’ll always find a way to survive as a flower along the way.
Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata)
Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata) is the last maligned plant in our presentation that deserves a deeper look. And though documentation for it is sparse, I still want to relate to you the stories I grew up hearing. Maybe someday somebody like you will spend the time to analyze whether there was anything to the stories.
The night before they were to work livestock, they’d get a bunch of ball moss and fill a big pot like packing a washing machine. Then they’d get something heavy to weigh the moss down, and fill the pot with water. Set it next to the fire and let it come to a boil then pull it off the fire and let it cool overnight. In the morning, take a washcloth bath with the water. It’d keep the biting flies and gnats off you until you sweat it off. They’d keep the pot handy for a “freshening up” as the day wore on. The boiled wet moss was thrown on the fire to keep flies, gnats, and mosquitoes generally out of the area.
Source: Kohlnf, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
