Glycyrrhiza lepidota be sweet and were used as food and for medicinal purposes by Native Americans. After eating a roasted root in 1806, Meriwether Lewis described an "agreeable flavour not unlike the sweet pittaitoe." American licorice is not sweet from sugar but from glycyrrhizin. Glycyrrhizin may increase blood pressure (aka hypertension) by interfering with cortisol conversion. The Zuni people chew the root to keep the mouth sweet and moist. American licorice is grazed by cattle, but not preferred and will increase under grazing as competing plants are grazed off. The new growth can be toxic. It has light green to white flowers
Tolman Sweet prairie region of the Middle West, Tolman Sweet has gained the reputation of being one of the hardiest of the old New England varieties. For this reason it is often selected as a stock upon which to top-graft less hardy kinds. The tree comes into bearing at a moderately early age, and, generally speaking, is a reliable cropper, yielding from moderate to heavy crops biennially or sometimes almost annually." The same source was unable to locate the origin of the variety, perhaps coming from Massachusetts. It was among the most popular sweet varieties in orchards in New York State at