Show inkberry weed cange to accustomed haunts along tile shady path beside sprain lake in yonkers ronk cra close by the site of an ancient indian village grows the pokeweed weed pigeon berry garget or inkberry de candra a coarse smooth weed with acid poisonous root rid stem branching sometimes six feet or more tall with racemes of flowers white with green centers on angular peduncles ped uncles two to fo four inches long they become clusters of 0 scarlet juice berries in ID the autumn the indians used the red juice to stain their deerskin and paint their faces in wartime white people settling on farms among the hills and writing home to relatives in england about the hardness of their lives and the say agedness of the country wrote with quill pens dipped in inkberry juice the indians are gone from the hill but the weed the squaws squads abed to dye feathers with still grows lovingly above the arrowheads and store stone hand choppers sleeping in the black loam of rocky hochy lonesome once the th lovely color of the berries decorated the blankets of hundreds of warriors warrior about campfires camp Bres fires where now boy scouts sleep out overnight and imagine I 1 agine they are old fashioned herb berb doctors thought the root an emetic and a tincture of the ripe berries was once used as a popular remedy for chronic rheumatism wild birds use the fruit for food and robins with their bills stained scarlet in august or october are not uncommon sights its chief benefit to humanity Is its beauty in fruit J otis swift t in the new york world telegram |