For Native Americans in the region before
the incursion of non-natives, the toolies were
simply their home and not some remote place.
According to Willis Jepson (author of “A Flora
of California,” 1909), there were originally
about 250,000 acres of tules in California.
Marsh plants, including tule, had multiple uses.
California tribes (variously, the Ohlone, the
Pomo and the Chumash) used tule stems to
build boats, and to make floor mats and cloth-
ing (sandals, mantles and skirts). Shredded fiber
was used for bedding and diapers. In addition,
tule was a food source: The rhizomes were eaten
raw, or boiled to create a mush or sweet flour.
Young shoots were also eaten raw or cooked.
Bulrush pollen was considered sweeter than that
of cattails and was used in making cakes. Pomo
Indians used the roots and leaves to make dye,
and the Luiseño used leaves as a poultice for
burns and wounds. Maidu women waved wands
made of tule in their ceremonial dances.
The common tule, Schoenoplectus acutus, is
native to wetlands and riparian areas across much
of the U.S. and Canada, including Washington
State. Next time you explore the waterfront at the
Union Bay Natural Area, there’s a good chance
you’ll be out in the tules! (Indeed, Chapter 2 of
the 1951 book “Union Bay,” by Harry Higman and
Earl Larrison was entitled “How the Tule Wrens
Acquired Summer Quarters.”)
The common name persimmon (Diospyros
species) also has indigenous roots and is trans-
literated from native languages in a wide range
of ways, from possimon to perseman to putchamins
and more. The name comes from Powhatan, an
Algonquian language of what is now the eastern
U.S. and means “choke fruit,” a reference to the
highly astringent taste of unripe persimmon.
Everyone hears differently, so French settlers
in Louisiana and Illinois referred to the fruit as
piaguimina, piakimina, or (in Créole) plaqueminier.
The first post-European-contact description
of persimmon was by an anonymous Portuguese
author, the “Gentleman of Elvas,” in his 1557
account of Hernando de Soto’s explora-
tion in what is now the southeastern U.S. The
word he used was ameixas, meaning “plum” in
20 v Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin
American persimmon, Diospyros virginiana.
Tradescantia zebrina.
(Photo courtesy Mokkie/Wikimedia Commons)
Hesperantha coccinea.
(Photo courtesy Alexey Yakovlev/Wikimedia Commons)