It would be easy to walk past cassina without noticing it.
The evergreen holly grows among pine flatwoods, maritime forests, sandy hammocks and coastal thickets across the Southeast. Its leaves are small and dark green. In winter, female plants carry bright red fruit that draws birds into the branches.
Nothing about it announces what the leaves contain.
Long before coffee and imported tea became familiar drinks on this continent, Indigenous peoples of the Southeast were gathering this plant.
The evergreen holly Juniper Farms calls cassina—Ilex vomitoria—was prepared in different ways by different communities. Its leaves and young stems could be dried or roasted and brewed into a caffeinated drink. Some preparations were ceremonial. Others belonged to social traditions. The plant itself traveled beyond the places where it naturally grew, carried through networks connecting people and landscapes across remarkable distances.
Archaeologists have identified evidence of an Ilex-based caffeinated drink at Cahokia, far beyond the plant's natural range.
The plant had traveled.
The knowledge had traveled with it.
The Plant Remained
European settlers eventually brewed cassina too.
Then tastes changed.
Coffee arrived through global trade. Imported tea became commonplace. The evergreen holly gradually slipped from the everyday American cup.
But cassina never left the landscape.
It continued growing beneath pines and live oaks, holding green leaves through winter while birds gathered its fruit and new generations walked past without necessarily knowing what it was.
Not a forgotten plant.
A plant that was here the entire time.
Green
Heat changes cassina considerably.
Roasting pushes the leaf toward something darker and warmer. The green edges soften. Deeper aromas begin to appear.
Leave the leaf unroasted and another side remains.
Fresh. Brisk. Herbaceous. Alive.
That is the cassina found in Green Fire.
We use the leaf green.
Not to make it something new.
To taste what was already there.
Find it in Nature™.