In D&D 5th edition the dancing lights cantrip has "wychwood" as one option for its spell component. However googling for wychwood brings up a brewery, an art space, and wychwood forest in Oxfordshire none of which seem like a spell component. Does anyone know what "wychwood" the Player's Handbook is referring to?
[RPG] Wychwood
dnd-5espell-components
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Best Answer
Ulmus Glabra aka Ulmus Glabra Montana is also known as Scotch Elm, Wychwood, Wych Elm, and Witch Hazel. (Witch Hazel is a different shrub in the US). It was used to make divining rods and had other reputed magical properties.
One of the things you lose by just treating components as "junk" and abstracting them away is that it's one of the remaining sources of actually learning something about the real world from D&D, it was one of our favorite things with all the weird stuff in the DMG in First Edition. Don't reject the hold-overs, use them to learn about something other than rolling dice!