cohosh

[From Eastern Abenaki kk`has.]

What exactly is a cohosh? Good question. We know it's a potent medicinal plant that first entered our vocabulary and pharmacopeia in New England. But is it the baneberry or the black snakeroot? Or something else entirely, a blue cohosh?

Any of those answers is possible in present-day English, according to the careful account in the Dictionary of American Regional English. Perhaps there was some difficulty in translation when speakers of English first learned the name cohosh from the Abenaki Indians of New England. (We aren't sure when that was; the name appears in print in a geographical work of 1789.) Or perhaps the Abenaki used cohosh in a general sense that included the three plants. In any case, they all are good medicine.

For example, the root of the black cohosh, alias black snakeroot and cohosh bugbane, is, according to various authorities, an analgesic, an antirheumatic, an antispasmodic, an astringent, an expectorant, and a sedative. You can use it for pain, rheumatism, constipation, colds, coughs, and insomnia. It is said to relieve pain by constricting the blood vessels. But go easy on the dose; it's so potent that it can affect your nervous system and lower your pulse. If you get a headache, you know you've taken too much.

This variety of cohosh, known to botanists as Cimicifuga racemosa, is a perennial that grows on long slender stalks up to nine feet tall. Its leaves are notched like those of a maple. It has little white flowers on long upright stems, sometimes called "fairy candles." But for medicinal purposes it's the root that counts.

Eastern Abenaki, which includes a dialect known as Penobscot, is an Algonquian-Ritwan language. It may now be extinct; in 1991 that there was only one aged speaker left. But at the time of the early English-speaking settlements in northern New England, the Abenaki were important linguistic contacts. We are indebted to the Eastern Abenaki for the well-known wigwam (1628) and possibly tumpline (1796), a strap worn around the head or chest to carry the weight of a backpack.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a plant of the genus Actaea having acrid poisonous berries
  Synonyms: baneberry, herb Christopher