Vetiver has been introduced into southern Lou isiana and has become naturalized there, but it has not yet been grown commercially to any extent. It seems to have been introduced here from the West Indies about seventy years ago. There are a few plants in every garden belonging to the native French population of the state. There is one large collection of plants at Shiloh, about sixty-four miles north of New Orleans, and another in St. Bernard parish.
Dr. Le Monnier, who has the garden at Shiloh, has some 700 plants in nine rows, six feet apart, each plant or tuft consisting of a compact mass about a foot and a half in diameter, giving rise to long stems which in September become jointed canes, one-half inch in diameter, and as much as eight feet high. In September or October he burns the plants, and digs up the roots which have then produced great numbers of small roots or fila ments about one thirty-second of an inch in diam eter and running one to two feet long. These are chopped off close to the central mass, which can then be replanted. The filaments are thoroughly washed in cold water, and, after being dried slowly in a room at a temperature of about 120 degrees, are ready for market.
The grass is propagated chiefly by transplanting the roots. When once established it forms dense, firmly rooted tufts, rather difficult to eradicate, but not spreading or increasing rapidly. It requires for its best development a rich moist soil of rather open texture. In Louisiana it is grown most eco nomically on exceedingly sandy soil, the product from which shakes almost entirely clean.
The period during which vetiver is in active sale in Louisiana is from November to April, after which the stock is mostly exhausted. The whole sale dealers pay for it at forty to eighty cents per pound. The higher price obtains at the beginning of the season. The quantity of domestic product on the market is very small. Almost every constant user of it has one or more plants in her own gar den. It has figured in a small way in the importa tions from France since a very early date. [See Watt, Dictionary of Economic Plants of India, and Dodge, Catalog of Useful Fiber Plants of the World.] Wintergreen ( Gaultheria procumbens, Linn.). Eri cacem. Fig. 725.
A slender, creeping, almost woody perennial, with running stems near the surface of the ground and short erect branches, four to six inches high, bearing dark green, leathery, alternate leaves, three to six in number, and small, white, almost egg-shaped axillary flowers, which are followed by round bright berries. It is a native of damp woods in the cooler parts of eastern North America.
Wintergreen herb has been distilled on a small commercial scale for its volatile oil for nearly a century in New England, and for a less time in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and other mountain ous states of the East, and as far west as Michigan, where the plant has been abundant. It seems, how ever, never to have been cultivated for this purpose.
It grows in woods from Canada to Georgia and westward to Michigan and Wisconsin. The leaves or herb are gathered in a fresh state, chopped up, and after moistening with water are left standing for about twenty-four hours to permit the develop ment of the oil, as explained in the introductory paragraph on volatile oils (p. 495). It contains a glucoside, gaultherin, which, when acted on by the splitting ferment gaultherase in the presence of water, yields oil of wintergreen and grape sugar. It is distilled with steam essentially as described in the general introduction. The usual yield is about .8 per cent.
Wormseed, American. [See Medicinal, Condimental and Aromatic Plants, page 466.] Wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium, Linn.). Com posite. (Fig. 2750, Cyclopedia of American Horticulture.) A perennial-rooted woody herb, two to four feet high, having stout, branching, erect or somewhat decumbent stems; twice or thrice pinnately divided leaves with narrow lobes, pale, finely hairy-woolly, especially beneath; hemispherical flowers in pani cles; fruit with hairy pappus. A common escape in waste places or along woodsides.
Wormwood and the oil derived from it by dis tillation have been known to European medicine for more than a century. It was introduced into the United States at an early date and has been culti vated both in Europe and America on a commercial scale. Formerly France was the chief producer. but in the last fifteen or twenty years the United States has held first rank as regards quantity dis tilled. The plant is grown chiefly in Michigan, New York, Nebraska and Wisconsin. Good ordi nary farm land is chosen for wormwood, and when in good tilth in spring is planted to wormwood seed, usually in rows three feet or more apart for easy horse cultivation, the plants being thinned out in the row to a distance of eighteen inches to two feet apart. The plants grow rapidly and yield a considerable cutting the first year. By proper weeding a wormwood-field will last three to five years before it is plowed up and replanted. Some growers sow the seed broadcast in pasture land and harvest the wormwood, which is avoided by the stock. This secures manuring of the crop. The tops are cut for distillation in an advanced flowering stage and the distillation is carried out as in peppermint. The oil is dark greenish or bluish brown in color and of a heavy consistency. Wooden tubs that have been used in wormwood distillation are not fit for use in distilling other oils. The yield is about one-half per cent of the weight of the fresh herb. In Michigan, in 1902, 90 acres yielded 873 pounds of oil, an average of 9.7 pounds of oil per acre.
Wormwood is the active principle in the French drink absinthe. In the form of this beverage and as an oil it is capable in overdoses of producing serious results resembling epileptic convulsions. The oil distilled in America is in part exported.