Yaupon

Indigenous people in the southeast brew a tea made from dried yaupon holly leaves (Ilex vomitoria). Consumed in various cultural and diplomatic contexts, yaupon is the only plant native to the southeast that contains caffeine.

The Apalachee, Creek, Seminole, and Muskogee, the peoples whose homelands you are now standing on, referred to the beverage as the "white drink" because of its association with cultural practices related to peace and purity. English-speaking colonizers called it the "black drink" on account of its color when brewed and because they failed to understand indigenous culture. Sources in Spanish refer to the drink as cassina, borrowed from the Timucua language.

Yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) can be identified by its small, serrated leaves and bright red berries. Cultivated varieties can grow upright into a small tree, or form dense thickets in shrub-form. Photo by Amber Soderholm, from The Grove's collection