Natural Uses.
Also known as vanillagrass, mannagrass and holy grass, it is well known to many Indigenous people in Canada and the United States as a material for baskets, as well as a scent, medicine and smudge. The bases of the leaves are broad, white and hairless. Sweetgrass flowers from June through August and is easily identified by the sweet vanilla-like fragrance of its leaves, its 3-flowered spikelets about 1/4 inch long, and its hairy lemmas. It grows from Canada and throughout the western and central plains (sparse) and Northeastern states of America. Experienced weavers often mix sweetgrass dried in different ways to create subtle designs, or add a few dyed leaves as coloured decorations. The long leaves of sterile shoots are used by Native Americans in making baskets [13,17,19,33]. Sweet grass holds an energy of blessing with some cleansing properties. Among the Chippewa wicko'bimucko'si (sweetgrass) is braided and used in pipe-smoking mixtures along will red willow and bearberry, when it is burned, prayers, thoughts and wishes rise with the smoke to the creator who will hear them. Medicine men kept sweet grass in the bag with their medicinal roots and herbs". Sweetgrass is strewn on floors as a room freshener, used to stuff pillows Sweetgrass is one of the most important Native American ceremonial plants, used by many tribes as an incense and purifying herb. Clippings of sweetgrass are usually braided and then dried prior to burning.
Sweetgrass is used to "smudge"; the smoke from burning sweetgrass is fanned on people, objects or areas. To many noses, sweetgrass has a distinct, vanilla-like scent, although to others, the aroma is more like that of a freshly mown lawn or a bale of freshly cut hay. (Foster & Duke 1990) For more on herbal remedies … Signing up enhances your TCE experience with the ability to save items to your personal reading list, and access the interactive map.Sweetgrass is a perennial grass, in the family Poaceae. that can be manually divided up to produce new plants.Methods of harvesting depend on the cultural traditions of the harvesters. A tea is brewed by Native Americans for coughs, sore throats, chafing and venereal infections. Among the stories told about sweetgrass is Skywoman Sweetgrass is known as hierochloe hirta in Latin, soni-ppeh in my native language and “basket grass or swamp grass” in cowboy Western English. Sweet grass acts as food and bedding material for rodents and small mammals. The spikelets themselves are about 1/4 inch long (the lower 2 flowers are male only, while the upper flower has both stamens and pistils (USDA n.d.). (photo by Nancy J. Turner) The vanilla-like fragrance is produced by an aromatic compound known as coumarin, which is even more evident when the leaves are dried. Densmore (1974) describes the story of "a hunting incident in which a party of men placed sweet grass on the fire when the camp was in danger of starving and they were going again to hunt. The scientific name for sweetgrass is Hierochloe odorata , but the plant has a number of aliases including manna grass, vanilla grass, Mary's grass, Seneca grass, bison grass, and holy grass.
If the sweetgrass meadows are neglected they will Sweetgrass is also used for basketry, either by itself or combined with brown ash splints. Sweetgrass is used to "smudge"; the smoke from burning sweetgrass is fanned on people, objects or areas. The smoke of burning sweet grass was inhaled to treat colds and also used to keep insects at bay. Sweetgrass is a circumboreal plant which is common above 40 degrees north latitude in Asia, Europe, and North America (Walsh 1994). Sweetgrass is strewn on floors as a room freshener, used to stuff pillows and mattresses, woven into baskets and hats, and — usually after the leaves are plaited into a long, thick braid — burned as a purifying smudge or incense. As a widely used and revered sacred plant, sweetgrass is still harvested today, and continues to play an important role in Indigenous cultures. Usually sweetgrass is harvested in the summer during the growing LearnReligions uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience and for our Purification Sweat - About My First Sweat Lodge ExperienceHow to Create Traditional Native American Prayer TiesHow To Clean Your Aura - The Vibrational Energies around Your Body (photo by Nancy J. Turner)
Many Indigenous experts affirm that continuous harvesting of sweetgrass helps to maintain the patches. In the north, picas store the seeds and make nests with the sweet-smelling blades. The stems of the grass are upright and hollow, growing up to 2 feet tall, without hairs.
Mi'kmaq have long used sweetgrass as a smudging ingredient, often mixed with other botanicals. It is usually braided, dried and burned. Individuals smudge themselves with the smoke, washing the eyes, ears, heart and body. As I just mentioned, sweetgrass is used in smudging, to cleanse and purify. It is warned that because the roots contain coumarin, that sweetgrass tea may be considered a carcinogenic. Sweetgrass can be found growing wild in wet meadows, low prairies, the edges of sloughs and marshes, bogs, shaded streambanks, lakeshores, and cool mountain canyons. Sweetgrass braids smolder and doesn't produce an open flame when burned. Mi'kmaq have long used sweetgrass as a smudging ingredient, often mixed with other botanicals. These stems, known as rhizomes, grow horizontally under the earth, creating dense patches of grass and often infertile, and rarely germinate to create new plants. Ritual Uses of Sweetgrass: Burned as a special offering during sacred prayers; Burned for personal and home blessings; Burned or smudged for purification purposes; Incorporated into sweat lodge ceremonies; Carried as a protective totem; Kept in the home to attract positive energies
Weeding Sweetgrass areas lessens competition from other plants.