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
Ilex glabra consumed by local bird populations. Cultivars of species plants (see for example Ilex glabra 'Shamrock') typically have better form (more compact, less open, less leggy and less suckering) that the species. Genus name in Latin means oak in probable reference to the similarity of the holly leaf to the leaf of a Mediterranean oak known as Quercus ilex (holly oak). Species name means smooth in reference to plant leaf surfaces. Gallberry honey is a highly rated honey that results from bees feeding on inkberry flowers. This honey is locally produced in certain parts of the Southeastern U. S. in areas