cascara

[2dognight]

How is it that Cascara is common bur Senna is rare

After all they both give you the sh.ts 

[pat]

I have to admit that I haven't heard of cascara.

[TRex]

I have to admit that I haven't heard of cascara.

Nor have I.

[cmh]

Cascara is an old fashioned word often used by my grandmothers as was senna but as they would both be in the region of125 by now maybe rare is the way to go for both words.

[Roddles]

Cascara is very familiar to me, after being dosed with it as a small child and deciding that I would never go near it willingly ever again.

[lilys field]

Yikes

[Alan W]

Yes, I'd heard of cascara, as a laxative given to children in the 1950s. (I was a child in the 1950s.)

It seems the word has had a new lease of life. I quote from the Australian website Broadsheet this month:

New additions include an iced cascara tea, which marries cascara (the dried skin of coffee cherries) with native aniseed myrtle.

This is apparently quite unrelated to the plant in the buckthorn family that yields the laxative. At least I hope so.

In any case, I agree the word is rare these days.