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bay berry?

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recurve shooter:
we call it wax myrtle down here. Is anyone realy familier with this shrub/tree/whatever you wana call it? it seems that it can be used for a variety of things, but most of the info i can find on the net is stuff written by people who heard maby it used to be used for something but arnt realy shure and dont know exactly how to use the stuff. its all over down here and im trying to start adding some plant knowledge to my skill book, so any info, experiences, ect would be awsome!

mullet:
I've heard of old Crackers here using it to catch fish. They'd put it in a burlap sack with a rock and tie the top shut. Then smash all the berries and throw it in a pool in the creek or river. It will stun the fish and they  will float to the top. I believe there is a toxin in the berries that paralyze them.

JW_Halverson:
In early colonial times the berry was collected and processed for the waxy oil, it was used for candles by the poor. 

The middle class used beeswax and the rich folks used spermicetti (sp?) from sperm whales.  George Washington conducted experiments to determine what burned longest, and brightest.  Spermicetti won the race for brightest with the least amount of soot, but beeswax was so much less expensive he felt you could burn two for one and come out ahead financially.  Thus endeth the history lesson for today.

mullet:
If we are talking about the same berry, it would be some stinky burning, and maybe toxic.

JW_Halverson:
It may well have been toxic in the long term, but in those days if it didn't kill you outright it wasn't considered toxic.  In those days they directly applied mercury to open festering venereal disease sores as a cure!!!  Reading about the old medical treatments makes me wonder how any of them survived long enough to reproduce!

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