Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Bitter sneezeweed was used as a type of dry snuff by some native populations to induce sneezing to drive out evil spirits or help clear head colds. I don’t know much about snuff but there’s dry snuff and wet snuff, for bitter sneezeweed snuff people used the dried leaves. Tobacco which is the basis of most snuff preparations is also a native plant to the Americas, as is bitter sneezeweed (native to Texas as surrounding states) but that’s very addictive. For a while it was considered preferable to smoking tobacco use as it didn’t add fumes to the air – in the U. S. Congress, which is already filled with a lot of hot air, there was a communal snuff box for almost a century – from the eighteen hundreds until nineteen thirties.
Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.