soap-weed

Grew up on it, in fact, long before the primary ingredient for flavor began to be soap-weed.

What does soap taste like? | Homesick Texan Homesick Texan 2006

Moreover, while the soap-weed wash at the fisherman's hut had whitened his skin, his face and hands still retained a smoky pallor which would take some time to wear off.

Plotting in Pirate Seas Francis Rolt-Wheeler 1918

Each excrescence on the plain his half-squinted eyes noticed, and with instant skill relegated to its proper category of soap-weed, mesquite, cactus.

Arizona Nights Stewart Edward White 1909

At length he swung Button in an easy lope toward what looked to be a bunch of soap-weed in the middle distance.

Arizona Nights Stewart Edward White 1909

She shrank, too, when the buckboard passed the skeleton of a steer, its bleached bones ghastly in the sunlight, but she smiled when she saw a sea of soap-weed with yellow blossoms already unfolding, and she looked long at a mile-wide section of mesquite, dark and inviting in the distance.

The Range Boss Charles Alden Seltzer 1908

She had dismounted to gather some yellow blossoms of soap-weed that had looked particularly inviting from the saddle, and too late she had become aware of the belligerent actions of the steer.

The Range Boss Charles Alden Seltzer 1908

On the broad levels were the yellow tinted lines that told of the presence of soap-weed, the dark lines that betrayed the mesquite, the saccatone belts that marked the little guillies.

The Two-Gun Man Charles Alden Seltzer 1908

To the flower-lover it is the yucca; to the cultivator, or whosoever meddles with its leaves, it is the Spanish-bayonet; to the utilitarian, who values a thing only as it is of use to him, it is the soap-weed -- ignoble name, referring to certain qualities pertaining to its roots.

A Bird-Lover in the West Olive Thorne Miller 1874

"Sometimes folks call it Indian soap-weed," explained the brakeman in her ear, "because if you break the leaves they'll lather in water.

Virginia of Elk Creek Valley Mary Ellen Chase 1930