Notes: White Rattlesnake Root is indigenous to the Garden area. Eloise Butler catalogued it on May 31 1907. She also planted, in October 1911, plants she collected within Glenwood Park [which surrounded the area of the Garden and is now named Theodore Wirth Park]. Martha Crone planted it in 1946 and '47 and it was listed on her 1951 census of Garden Plants. Susan Wilkins added plants in 2011, '12 and '14. It is native to most of Minnesota except some counties in the SW quarter. In North America it is concentrated in upper eastern half of the U.S., not found in the SE Gulf states and in Canada it is reported from Manitoba eastward to Quebec.

There are four species of the genus Prenanthes that are native to Minnesota and all have quite similar common names: P. aspera Michx., known as Rough Rattlesnake-root or Hairy Rattlesnake-root; P. crepidinea Michx., known as Nodding Rattlesnake-root; P. racemosa Michx., known as Purple Rattlesnake-root or Smooth Rattlesnake-root; and our species in the Garden, P. alba L., White Rattlesnake-root.

Eloise Butler wrote in 1911 in her unpublished work The Wild Botanic Garden: "On the borders of copses, a graceful composite, Prenanthes alba, may still be seen. One notices the broad, halberd-shaped leaves long before the flowering time and wonders what sort of plant it is. And later on is sure to mark the pendant bells of the flower heads with their delicate, mauve-colored bracts enclosing whitish petals. A closely allied species has local repute in South Carolina and elsewhere as a remedy for snakebites, so the genus is known as rattlesnake root. This “gall-of-the-earth” has subterranean tubers that are bitter enough to counteract any virulence, if, as was once believed, the more ill tasting the medicine, the more potent it is to cure. The flowers go to seed like the dandelion, but the parachute of fine hairs that wafts the seed abroad is tawny brown instead of white."

Lore and Uses: It is not believed that the plant has ever been listed in the U. S. Pharmacopoeia, but in 1887 Dr. Charles Millspaugh reported that it has “Been known in domestic practice from an early date and is said to be an excellent antidote to the bite of the rattlesnake and other poisonous serpents.” In American Medicinal Plants, 1887, (Ref. #27) he goes on to explain exactly how it was used. The milky juice was recommended to be taken internally, while the leaves, steeped in water were to be frequently applied to the wound. Also, a decoction of the root could be taken.

In Indian Herbalogy of North America, (Ref #12) Alma Hutchens gives the recipe for using the juice and root for dysentery or diarrhea. The juice could be drank. With the root you would grate it into small pieces. One teaspoonful of granulated root steeped in one cup of boiling water. Drink it cold, one cup a day, a large mouthful at a time (probably because it tasted terrible). Kelly Kindscher (Ref. #14a) reports how the Choctaws made a tea of the tops for use to mitigate pain, while fellow Minnesotan Frances Densmore (Ref. #5) reported from her conversations with Minnesota White Earth Chippewa women, that the Chippewa made a broth from the root that was drunk by women after childbirth to promote the flow of milk.

Many of these uses may stem from the old “Doctrine of Signatures,” where a relationship was presumed between a human ailment or body part and the color, shape or characteristic of a plant. Nothing scientific mind you, but practical folk medicine that science usually (but not always) cannot duplicate.

But the most fascinating use of the Rattlesnake-root plant, (getting finally to its common name) can only be best described by a direct quotation and it will be up to you to believe it or not! William Byrd of Virginia wrote in 1728 that “the rattlesnake has an utter antipathy to this plant, in-so-much that if you smear your hand with the juice of it, you may handle the viper safely. Thus much can I say of my own experience, that once in July, when these snakes are in their greatest vigor, I besmear’ed a dog’s nose with the powder of this root and made him trample on a large snake several times, which however, was so far from biting him that it perfectly sicken’d at the dog’s approach and turn’d its head from him with the utmost aversion.” (History of Folklore of North American Wildflowers, 1999, Timothy Coffey. Ref. #3).