by Joshua Heston<\/strong><\/p>\n What makes a wildflower, exactly? Most every plant flowers at some time or another.<\/p>\n Some are woody perennials; others are herbaceous annuals. Most are native to North America; yet quite a few were introduced years ago from Europe.<\/p>\n Plant classification can be hard.<\/p>\n Suffice it to say, if it is a plant, if it flowers, and it has significance to the Ozarks, sooner or later, that plant should end up here.<\/p>\n I am the fourth generation [to be] born and raised in the Ozarks. My ancestors came here in 1836. [The] herbs and remedies [were] handed down [to us] from the Indians. Most of us natives have some Indian blood in us. The white man learned how to use these herbs and roots from the Indians.<\/p>\n Many a life in the early frontier days was saved with these remedies.<\/p>\n In the spring, or about May First, people gathered enough roots and herbs to do them until the next spring. The springtime was a happy celebration of \u201cRoot Digging Days.\u201d It was a time to shed their red underwear and to get their corn liquor stills running \u2014 because all good medicines contained some corn whiskey for a preservative.<\/p>\n Plants, Herbs & Lore by Joshua Heston What makes a wildflower, exactly? Most every plant flowers at some time or another. Some are woody perennials; others are herbaceous annuals. Most are native to North America; yet quite a few were introduced years ago from Europe. Plant classification can be hard. Suffice it to say, if…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8729,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8751","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8752,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8751\/revisions\/8752"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Chick Allen (root digger) says…<\/h2>\n
\u2014 Forward, Allen, Allen, Chick with Evelyn Fullerton, Ozark Root Digger,<\/span> May 1974.<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"