Hey! Also in Appalachian Ohio here, happy to read your journal!
If you did indeed see a rattlesnake and you're more in the south/southeast part of the state, it would be much more likely to be a timber rattler--timber rattlesnakes are endangered here, but there are reintroduction efforts. If you're more east/northeast though, you might be right on massanauga. If it was young, it might not have had much of a rattle yet-- the rattle forms layers each time they shed a skin. There are also other snakes (like black snakes) that fake rattling at you to scare you off, even though they aren't venomous snakes.
Mayapples I hear you have to get just right at perfect ripeness (lasts a day or two), or they will upset your stomach. I haven't tried them. But I hear box turtles like them and I've seen them hanging out in mayapple patches!
I've never heard of eating toothwort leaf, but the root does have a nice flavor. It can be hard to reach the tuber-y part because it's at the end of a long thing root and often breaks off when you dig it up. It's so tiny that I don't really eat it much except to introduce people to the plant, because you'd have to dig up a lot of them to make a meal, and spring ephermerals like that tend to have slow, long life cycles.
Is the evergreen a young eastern hemlock? Those persist in cool ravines like the Hocking Hills. Or could it be a cultivated tree from nearby? I've never heard of labrador tea growing around here, it doesn't look like what we called labrador tea way up north.
Good luck on the tree of heaven, you are truly doing god's work if you get rid of that patch!
