Let me first wish everyone a Happy Winter Solstice and a Festive Holiday. With the longest night passing this past week and the various holidays beginning to be celebrated, we wanted to do something special for everyone. We know a lot of you will be visiting friends and family over the next week or two….
Restoring the Ilex cassine (Walter) name to the plant that was “Cassine, Asi Lupubski, Cassena, Yaupon” and held sacred to the Indigenous tribes of the Southeastern United States. Part 1.
As we continue our blog series about Yaupon(Cassine) to part 4, we are finally going to begin a discussion it comes to why we call it Ilex vomitoria ([Solander] Aiton) versus Ilex cassine (Walter) from a scientific binomial nomenclature point of view. We at Hortfire are of the belief that the correct name should be…
Seeding the future, while cracking the seed code(coat).
In part 3 of 6 of our Yaupon(Cassine) blog series, we are going to fast forward to what was suppose to be our last blog of the series. In part 4 we will return back to our look at the naming of Yaupon(Cassine) through time and continue to build our case to change the scientific…
The Conflicting Tea Edges of an Empire
For part 2 of 6 of our blog series about Yaupon(Cassine) tea, we are going to take a chronological look at how Yaupon(Cassine) tea and Camellia tea came into European civilization. While our Tea division does dabble in the cultivation and manufacturing of both Camellia and Yaupon(Cassine) tea, we never expect to research both and…
Code Talkers and their ancestral tea
Yaupon/Cassine tea have you ever heard of it? Better yet, have you ever tried it? Most people would say, No, which is unfortunate because it is a wonderful beverage. While we start a series of postings about Yaupon/Cassine tea, we had a hard time at looking at a lot research and seeing confusion about it….
Tea Talk: What really is Pekoe Tea?
Have you ever wondered what Pekoe or Orange Pekoe tea was, what it meant, and where it came from? There is uncertainty in the world about the exact origins of these terms (more like centuries old disagreements). What is for certain, is that it refers to a Chinese-Indus-British grading system of the leaves of tea…
When the Fig creeps out of control…part 1.
Many people who live in USDA climate zones 8-9 (consisting of the Coastal Plain towards the ocean, throughout the southeast from Virginia to Texas and predominantly the west coast of the US) are familiar with Creeping Fig, Ficus pumila L. Another name for it is Fig Ivy. It also escaped cultivation in the tropical regions of Caribbean….
Talking about the Palmettos and Bees
As the “Dog Days of Summer” are here, there are a few things that always stick out to me this time of the year, Tough Buckthorn (Bumellia tenax L) blooming,essential hydration, and Palmettos (Sabal palmetto L) blooming to name a few. Growing up and working for my dad, when the palmettos started blooming I knew…
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