Deborah Murdock, age 10, of Bakersville, North Carolina, for her question:
What are Indian turnips?
The early settlers called the people they met in the New World Indians and named many plants for them. In Colonial days, corn was called Indian corn and Indian shamrock was the purple trillium. The candlenut was called Indian walnut and the lovely lupine was Indian beet. Dutchman's breeches was called Indian boys and girls and the older name for Jack in the pulpit was Indian turnip.
The Indian turnip sounds as if it should have roots somewhat like turnips and it does. But they are NOT good to eat.
Nowadays, most people call it Jack in the pulpit. In early spring, it puts on a flower arrangement that looks for all the world like a small preacher standing inside a fancy pulpit, topped with a leafy canopy. Nobody knows why the stiff little preacher was named Jack.
The pretty wild plant grows in moist woods and marshy thickets all the way from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico and westward as far as Minnesota. All summer it made and stored food in its turnip, so that it could get an early start in the spring.
As soon as winter is done, up pop the stems, each one topped with a neat group of three green green leaves. Then from the center comes a straight stem which, by about April, turns into Jack in the pulpit. The top of the stem becomes the poker stiff preacher. It is covered with tiny flowerets, which may be male or female. This is called the spadix. The pulpit is called the spathe. It is shaped like a leafy funnel, with its base attached to the stem below the spadix. At the wide open end at the top, one side of the spathe reaches way up and over like a graceful canopy above the preacher.
Though the pulpit is streaked with browns, greens and pretty purples, it is not a petal and the flowerets on the preacher have no true petals. Gnats and other flying insects slide into the slippery pulpit and help to transfer pollen from male to female flowerets.
From April, through May and June, the preacher may be seen in his pulpit. Then the seeds ripen. As the leafy spathe withers, a round ball of bright red berries appears at the top of the spadix.
Some birds eat the leaves and berries and naturally we refuse to steal the food that Mother Nature provides for her wild creatures. Nor can we eat Jack in the pulpit's turnip because it contains a very bitter poison. Some say it loses its flavor and its poison when boiled but we don't want to eat that either. In Colonial days, mothers used the bitter juices as cough medicines but our modern cough medicines taste better and work better.