檫木属属

物种

台湾檫树（S. randaiense）：为台湾特有种植物。

檫木（S. tzumu）：原产于中国大陆，分布于安徽、福建、广东、广西、贵州、湖北、湖南、江苏、四川、云南与浙江等地区。

北美檫树（S. albidum）：原产于北美洲东部，分布北至美国缅因州与加拿大安大略省，南至佛罗里达州，西至爱荷华州及德克萨斯州东部。

†S. hesperia：已灭绝，其叶的化石见于北美洲西部（美国华盛顿州与加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省）的始新世早期岩层。

Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. The genus is distinguished by its aromatic properties, which have made the tree useful to humans.

Description

Sassafras trees grow from 9–35 metres (30–115 feet) tall with many slender sympodial branches and smooth, orange-brown bark or yellow bark. All parts of the plants are fragrant. The species are unusual in having three distinct leaf patterns on the same plant: unlobed oval, bilobed (mitten-shaped), and trilobed (three-pronged); the leaves are hardly ever five-lobed. Three-lobed leaves are more common in Sassafras tzumu and S. randaiense than in their North American counterparts, although three-lobed leaves often occur on S. albidum. The young leaves and twigs are quite mucilaginous and produce a citrus-like scent when crushed. The tiny, yellow flowers are generally six-petaled; S. albidum and (the extinct) S.

Taxonomy

The genus Sassafras was first described by the Bohemian botanist Jan Presl in 1825. The name "sassafras", applied by the botanist Nicolas Monardes in 1569, comes from the French sassafras. Some sources claim it originates from the Latin saxifraga or saxifragus: "stone-breaking"; saxum "rock" + frangere ("to break"). Sassafras trees are not within the family Saxifragaceae.

Early European colonists reported that the plant was called winauk by Native Americans in Delaware and Virginia and pauane by the Timucua. Native Americans distinguished between white sassafras and red sassafras, terms which referred to different parts of the same plant but with distinct colors and uses.

Distribution and habitat

Many Lauraceae are aromatic, evergreen trees or shrubs adapted to high rainfall and humidity, but the genus Sassafras is deciduous. Deciduous sassafras trees lose all of their leaves for part of the year, depending on variations in rainfall. In deciduous tropical Lauraceae, leaf loss coincides with the dry season in tropical, subtropical and arid regions.

Sassafras is commonly found in open woods, along fences, or in fields. It grows well in moist, well-drained, or sandy loam soils and tolerates a variety of soil types, attaining a maximum in southern and wetter areas of distribution.

Sassafras albidum ranges from southern Maine and southern Ontario west to Iowa, and south to central Florida and eastern Texas, in North America. S.

Ecology

The leaves, bark, twigs, stems, and fruits are eaten by birds and mammals in small quantities. For most animals, sassafras is not consumed in large enough quantities to be important, although it is an important deer food in some areas. Carey and Gill rate its value to wildlife as fair, their lowest rating. Sassafras leaves and twigs are consumed by white-tailed deer and porcupines. Other sassafras leaf browsers include groundhogs, marsh rabbits, and American black bears. Rabbits eat sassafras bark in winter. American beavers will cut sassafras stems.

Toxicity

Sassafras oil contains safrole, which may have a carcinogenic effect.

Long-term pharmacological studies in the laboratories of the Food and Drug Administration, demonstrated safrole, which is also the principal component of oil of sassafras, to be a carcinogen. The scientific data were carefully reviewed by a group of scientists made up of representatives of government and representatives from a panel recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. This group concluded that safrole is to be classed as a weak hepatic carcinogen.

Uses

All parts of sassafras plants, including roots, stems, twig leaves, bark, flowers, and fruit, have been used for culinary, medicinal, and aromatic purposes, both in areas where they are endemic and in areas where they were imported, such as Europe. The wood of sassafras trees has been used as a material for building ships and furniture in China, Europe, and the United States, and sassafras played an important role in the history of the European colonization of the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Sassafras twigs have been used as toothbrushes and fire starters.

Culinary

Sassafras albidum is an important ingredient in some distinct foods of the US.