Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) is a favorite that appears this time of year. It is also called button eryngo and button snake-root. It is in the parsley family and is native to central North America's tall grass prairies.The common name "rattlesnake master" is attributed to early European pioneers erroneously believing the plant to be an antidote for rattlesnake venom based upon Native American's use of it for medicinal properties. I love the name more than the plant.
It grows almost 6' tall with dense ball-shaped umbels of flowers topping each stem.Small individual flowers in the umbels are small with blueish white petals and a faint honey scent.
Rattlesnake Master
I knew this ellipsis among coneflowers wouldn't cure me.
Though I collected its green-white doorknobs,
though it nodded enthusiastically about light,
if I sucked its taproot after a bite, I'd still unclot
and cool like those tuberculosis patients
who once sought the "healing air" of Mammoth Cave.
Paraffin, spotty coughs, soft footsteps punctuating the dark—
beneath every prairie is another prairie.
Parsed of color, roots like nesting vipers,
it threads through fungi a pale network,
whose velvet and dew crumbles in my fingers.
Loam whets the air. A borer moth clamps
a Rattlesnake Master's stalk, shooting alerts
through root-webs; poison rises in spines.
I imagine a braid through the dark—
those TB patients holding hands—last becoming first
as he wades toward—they are certain—that mouth
where daylight lolls like a tongue.
Though I collected its green-white doorknobs,
though it nodded enthusiastically about light,
if I sucked its taproot after a bite, I'd still unclot
and cool like those tuberculosis patients
who once sought the "healing air" of Mammoth Cave.
Paraffin, spotty coughs, soft footsteps punctuating the dark—
beneath every prairie is another prairie.
Parsed of color, roots like nesting vipers,
it threads through fungi a pale network,
whose velvet and dew crumbles in my fingers.
Loam whets the air. A borer moth clamps
a Rattlesnake Master's stalk, shooting alerts
through root-webs; poison rises in spines.
I imagine a braid through the dark—
those TB patients holding hands—last becoming first
as he wades toward—they are certain—that mouth
where daylight lolls like a tongue.
Amie Whittemore
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