Harvesters save seeds to keep sweetgrass heritage alive in E. Cooper

Basketmaker Nakia Wigfall and Chrissie Lanzieri, a Dewees Island wildlife intern, shook sweetgrass seeds from their feathery bloom last week, collecting them in brown paper sacks and carefully separating the seeds from the fluff.

It was Wigfall's second harvest from Dewees Island, where the grass used in the famed baskets grows on about 540 sunny acres of the 1,200-acre island.

Wigfall, executive director of the Sweetgrass Cultural Arts Festival, and other basketmakers have been trying to re-establish access to the grass, which has been lost through East Cooper's development along marshlands since the 1970s.

Last year, the seed was collected and used to start new grass plants in a nursery off S.C. Highway 41. But the trip back and forth from Wigfall's Six-Mile community to care for the plants became too expensive with high gas prices.

This time, Wigfall and others plan to build smaller nurseries in their own backyards before plugging plants into the ground.

Seeds can be harvested from the plant in winter months once the grass bloom turns from purple to brown.

Wigfall said environmental landscapers say the best way to plant the grass is to just throw the seeds onto bare earth. But Wigfall is taking the plant from its natural habitat, the damp soil alongside the island's brackish Lake Timicau, to her home, where it wouldn't grow naturally.

In the plant's first six months, it needs lots of care and frequent watering, Wigfall said.

"You have to keep a close eye on it," she said.

Once in the ground, the plants need at least six to eight hours of sunlight each day. Individual plants require about two years of growth before someone can pluck the grass for baskets.

Sweetgrass plants have sprung up recently in Mount Pleasant as neighborhoods and commercial businesses incorporate sweetgrass into their landscapes. The grass is found growing in traffic circles, grassy mall strips and on about 15 acres of Mount Pleasant Waterworks property.

At Oakland Plantation, a vandal recently cut off the grass at ground level, perhaps to sell to basket weavers. Cutting the plants can kill it. But taking grass from the plants is necessary. The plant dies as it grows, and the dead growth can choke the plant, killing it. Pulling out the brown blades is the best way to harvest it.

Basketmakers often avoid collecting the grass on their own because it's become harder to find and also because they fear it hides snakes.

Wigfall has harvested the grass since she was a child.

"When I was a kid," she said, "I didn't have any fears."

She would run through the woods to pull the grass, learning to identify which snakes were venomous. But, she said, after she had children of her own, she wondered what would happen to them if something happened to her.

On Dewees Island, accessible only by boat, the grass goes relatively undisturbed. Just 16 of the 62 homes are inhabited full time. Lanzieri, who runs on the beach each morning, said she sometimes steps in the same footprints as the day before. Basketmakers are allowed to harvest the grass throughout the year.

Dewees Island Property Owners Association Environmental Program Director Lori Sheridan Wilson said there might be snakes but that the harvesters' biggest worries are mosquitoes, poison ivy and the occasional tick.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.