PUTTY ROOT - LAN ADAM-VÀ-EVE

Also called: Adam & Eve Root Botanical: Aplectrum hyemale Description: A native wild orchid that has a lone leaf that endures all winter. This leaf can be up to 10" long and 3" wide with striking silver veins. In the spring, the leaf vanishes and a thin stem of green purple flowers appears. Habitat: Native woodland plant of North America that can be found in the shade of rich moist woods.
The name "putty root" comes from the fact that Indians used the sticky matter retrieved from crushing the bulb of the plant. This was used in the same manner as glue, to mend pottery and other objects together. "Adam & Eve" comes from the growth habit of the bulbs. As the flower and leaf grow from the year's growth, referred to as "Eve", last year's bulb, called Adam, is still present. One way of propagating the plant is to cut Adam away from Eve and replant him. This is one of the easier orchids to grow from seed. Pour boiling water over a pot of soil to sterilize it, let it cool and sprinkle the seeds over the soil. Then cover with a dusting of fine granite grit to prevent slugs from eating your seedlings, and set it outside and let nature take its course. The seeds will usually germinate the following spring and before long you will have a settlement of plants that will be sure to receive comment. If you're foraging for wild "putty root" it would be best to search during the autumn and winter, especially when there is a light coating of snow on the ground. The plants are much easier to find then. They grow in small colonies, with only a few plants flowering in a season.
What the Ancestors Knew: The Catawba used this root as a pain killer. The roots were boiled, pounded and powdered, then used for boils and head pains. A dressing of the beaten roots was applied to boils. The Cherokee give this to endow children with the gift of expression and to make them fat. Adam and Eve; Putty-root (Aplectrum spicatum) Orchid family (A. hyemale of Gray) Flowers—Dingy yellowish brown and purplish, about 1 in. long, each on a short pedicel, in a few-flowered, loose, bracted raceme 2 to 4 in. long. No spur ; sepals and petals similar, small and narrow, the lip wavy-edged. Scape : 1 to 2 ft. high, smooth, with about 3 sheathing scales. Leaf : Solitary, rising from the corm in autumn, elliptic, broad, plaited-nerved, 4 to 6 in. long. Root : A corm usually attached to one of the preceding season. Preferred Habitat—Moist woods or swamps. Flowering Season—May—June. Distribution—Georgia, Missouri, and California northward, into British Possessions. More curious than beautiful is this small orchid whose dingy flowers of indefinite color and without spurs interest us far less than the two corms barely hidden below ground. These singular solid bulbs, about an inch thick, are connected by a slender stalk, suggesting to the imaginative person who named the plant our first parents standing hand in hand in the Garden of Eden. But usually several old corms—not always two, by any means —remain attached to the nearest one, a bulb being produced each year until Cain and Abel often join Adam and Eve to make up quite a family group. A strong, glutinous matter within the corms has been used as a cement, hence the plant's other popular name. From the newest bulb added, a solitary large leaf arises in late summer or autumn, to remain all winter. The flower stalk comes up at one side of it the following spring. Meantime the old corms retain their life, apparently to help nourish the young one still joined to them, while its system is taxed with flowering.