Page 45 - 2010 Lake St. Clair Guide Magazine
P. 45
The "Palm Trees" of the North
In China, Turkey, and Europe, All willows don’t like shade, pocrates, who is known as the
Willow Trees are commonly and grow in wet soil where founder of medicine and was
planted in cemeteries to other trees are scarce. There regarded as the greatest phy-
express grief. The Arabian are more than 400 species of sician of his time, prescribed
story-tellers relay the tale weeping willow trees, with the bark and leaves of the
of the birth of the willow most found in the Northern willow tree to relieve pain and
tree when King David, who Hemisphere. Weeping wil- fever. The ancient Egyptians
reigned over the Kingdom of lows cross with one another and Greeks, and the American
Israel from.1000–970 BC, had so easily that new varieties Indians, sometimes chewed
an affair and then married are constantly springing up. the leaves of the willow tree
Bathsheba because she was As the greenish-yellow flow- and other plants to relieve
pregnant. King David was one ers that appear in May never pain. Early American cultures
day playing on his harp in his produce seed in this species, also discovered that willow
private chamber, when two and as almost all Willows can bark had medical uses and the
angels appeared before him be readily propagated by slips, most common one was in the
and convinced him of his sin. this is the way in which this relief of pain and inflamma-
He threw himself upon the tree is always multiplied. The tion. In the 18th Century, the
ground, and lay 40-days and original Weeping Willow seems active extract in the bark was
40-nights weeping bitter tears to be a native of extra-tropical isolated. It was a substance
of penitence; and in those 40- Asia, from Japan and China to called salicin. When salicin is
days he wept as many tears as Armenia and the banks of the mixed in water it is very acid-
the whole human race have... Euphrates, and of Egypt and ic. This acid is called salicylic
so that two streams of tears North Africa. acid. But in its pure form, this
flowed out into the garden, drug made people nauseous.
whence there sprang up two The most interesting thing So in 1898, a German chemist
trees, the Weeping Willow and about the weeping willow and named Felix Hoffman found a
the Frankincense-tree, the its cousins is it medicinal his- way to make a salicylate drug
boughs of the one drooping tory. Cultures as far back as that didn’t upset the stomach.
in grief, whilst the other con- Mesopotamian recognized and This new drug was called ace-
stantly distils tears of sorrow. wrote about the medical uses tylsalicylic acid, but we know it
of willow bark. In 400 BC, Hip- much better today as “aspirin.”
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