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Last Updated on August 22, 2024 by Paul Clayton
Table of Contents
Foraging Trees for Natural Medicine
Learning to forage trees for natural medicine connects us to our environment and provides us with practical, natural alternatives to synthetic drugs. It’s a holistic approach that emphasizes the importance of biodiversity and the interconnectedness of health and nature.
- Identification and Knowledge: Know different trees and their medicinal values.
- Safe Foraging Practices: Collect from clean areas and respect protected zones.
- Preparation and Use: Use parts wisely and store them properly.
- Ethical Considerations: Harvest sustainably and avoid over-harvesting.
- Potential Risks: Be aware of toxicity, side effects, and allergies.
It’s no secret that OTC meds and routine doctor’s visits may not be applicable during survival situations. With that in mind, preppers know that taking advantage of natural resources to stay healthy and alive is crucial.
Let’s learn how trees can help us gain nutrients and heal the body.
How to Forage
Foraging is an essential survival skill that every prepper should become well versed in. Being able to forage in an emergency can mean the difference between thriving and painful starvation or suffering.
Wildcrafting skills are vital to your food security and medical survival plan as long-term stockpiling.
Before embarking on your foraging journey, knowing the best ways of harvesting from trees is essential. This helps you and your family survive and preserves nature as much as possible. Let’s go over a few tips for successful foraging.
Whatever you’re harvesting, do not waste nature’s gifts; only use the needed amount to create your required treatment and leave the rest to keep growing.
For example, removing bark from a tree is best to take it from a dead branch instead of the tree’s trunk. Trunks losing bark can lead to infestation of icky pests and diseases.
Another way to guarantee the tree’s health and your own is to be 100% certain when identifying it.
Check out some books for herbal medicine, watch a few survivalist tutorials, and become well-versed on the trees in your area. Once you’ve confirmed its identity, there are plenty of ways to use different types of trees for medicine.
Ways to Use Trees for Medicine
Tree huggers are kind of onto something, but it takes more than a cuddle to feel a plant’s healing powers. Tree bark and leaves can be used to cultivate medicinal products.
With just a few products you likely already have in the prepper pantry, you can make a soothing salve, warm wash, or treatment tea.
Simmer some in a cup of water for about 20 minutes if you’re using tree leaves. Enjoy a delicious and soothing tea or double your batch to make a foot soak or wound wash. Tea from the bark is essentially the same process, but don’t forget to strain before drinking
When creating a salve, steep leaves or bark in warm oil for around 20 minutes before straining. Then melt some beeswax (or another wax substitute) over a hot bath. Combine some wax with that oil, and you’ll soon have a perfect salve.
This video has been included to clarify the topic. Credit goes to Trillium: Wild Edibles
Types of Trees and How to Use Them
Maple
Whether you genuinely realize it or not, we all bask in the glory of precious maple leaves. Every time you enjoy pancakes with syrup or indulge in a maple-glazed donut, thank the maple tree. Not to mention, their leaves and bark have been used for plenty of medicinal purposes.
People make tea with maple bark or use its syrup to treat issues like sore eyes, diarrhea, swollen limbs, kidney infections, colds and coughs, and bronchitis. The leaves of a young maple can even be used to make massage oil, a lifesaver for sore muscles.
If you grow these trees or can find one, tapping them for sap can even get you some homemade maple syrup. Depending on your location, tree tapping can usually begin anywhere from late February to mid-April.
Ultimately, the best time to tap them is when the daily temperature rises above freezing, and the nighttime temperature falls below.
When finding a maple tree to tap, ensure it’s 12 inches long. Tapping anything smaller could damage the tiny tree! Usually, you should only do one tap per tree, but up to three will be okay if it’s a very large one.
What does one need to tree tap? Stock your prepper supply with a cordless drill, drill bit, hammer, spiles and hooks, colored tape, and extra buckets with lids.
The process starts with you measuring the drill bit and wrapping a piece of colored tape around it, about three inches from the end.
Once you can quickly determine when to stop drilling, select a spot on the tree two or four feet off the ground. Drill into the tree at a slight angle upward until the edge of your tape has reached the tree.
At this point, you may notice some sap spilling out of the hole if it’s running.
To help the sap release, remove debris from the hole and insert your spile. Tap it gently into the tree with a hammer until it securely fits and the sap flows out of the pile.
Then, hang your bucket on the spile, cover it, and wait to enjoy some sweet maple syrup with your fresh sap.
Pine
The pine tree is a classic, not just when adorned with lights and sparkly ornaments in December. As an evergreen, it’s often easier to access year-round in colder climates. It is excellent for preppers on the chilly side since it can be used for medicinal purposes.
Pine trees can be beneficial for making homemade antiseptics and wound washing. The needles and twigs can be simmered to make a vitamin C-rich tea. Some people even take pine baths to help soothe sore muscles and throats.
To make pine needle tea, clean a few handfuls of green pine needles. Break them off into pieces before simmering for around 10 minutes. After letting it steep for a few minutes, you’ll have a flavorful drink to sip on.
As far as pine’s bark, the light-colored inner part is called the cambium layer. It rests underneath that outer bark just above the more challenging interior of the tree. Cambium can be harvested by cutting a square shape in the tree’s side (very carefully!) with a knife and then peeling back the layers.
Cambium makes a yummy and nutritious snack that can be scraped into strips like bacon and then fried or roasted. Speaking of snacks, you can’t forget about pine nuts! They can be harvested in the fall, providing delicious flavor and plenty of protein.
Grab some gloves and a ladder if you have one because those cones that contain the nut seeds are sticky and high up. Store the cones in a sack and place them in the sun for a few days to dry and open them up.
Roasting the cones by a fire or in the oven will cause them to open and reveal plenty of pine nuts.
Willow
Beyond its simply beautiful exterior, willow tree bark contains salicylic acid—aspirin in its natural form. This tree has been used to treat a variety of issues, both internal and external, for many years.
Willow bark in tea can tremendously heal pain, fevers, and inflammation. Become your natural medicine doctor when using it outside the body; expect all cuts, scrapes, and position ivy to diminish.
Those used as an oil can soak arthritic joints to help reduce pain and swelling.
It’s ideal to forage willow trees in the spring, just as buds form. Willows are one of the first trees to bloom in early spring. These trees will always grow fast and can even tolerate prolonged flooding areas; no wonder they’re so strong!
Birch
Birch trees can serve as amazing natural medicine and a food source in emergencies. Birch twigs, leaves, and bark pack a big punch of healing powers. From skincare and vitamins to pain relief, birch has you covered.
Many preppers prefer using birch leaves and twigs to make tea. It’s said to help with a variety of issues, including constipation, oral sores, gout, kidney stones, and rheumatic pain.
Soak in a birch bath for natural relief from skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema, or make a stronger concoction by soaking in a birch bath.
In the past, people also believed birch had the cosmetic ability to restore beauty and strength. The tree’s sap was once prescribed for skin issues and to remove spots and freckles. Packed full of vitamin C certainly doesn’t hurt the skin, too!
Like plenty of other trees, birch can be edible during famine. Stop the bark and grind it to make a meal for flour or add the leaves to salad for an aromatic flavor. The twigs also make a tasty snack for foragers.
You can find beautiful birches across the northern United States, Canada, and Europe. This alternative to medicine will be a lifesaver during survival situations. You’ll find that it starts to bud in the spring as the weather gets warmer.
Elm Trees
You’re in luck if you’re near an elm tree during survival. The tree’s parts can be made into a paste, tea, or powder. People have been ingesting elm’s inner bark medicinally for generations.
As a paste, elm trees can aid in healing fresh wounds or draw out fevers when applied directly to the abdomen. The powdery bark added to water can make jelly and soothe urinary and bowel issues and sore throats.
Elm’s inner bark is soothing and contains mucilage that can help with mucous membrane issues.
Inner elm bark is often issued to soothe the digestive tract and is even sold as an herbal medicine to treat sensitive stomachs. Harvesting slippery elm bark from low branches or coppicing stumps from fallen trees is best.
The bark pulls away quickly, even from the smallest branches.
Springtime means elms are ready for harvest. As the sugary sap rushes from the roots when you’re ready to forage, the inner bark swells and fills with sap and nutrients. All that extra liquid makes the inner bark more pliable and accessible to remove from the tree.
Elm trees’ outer bark is soft and corky; a knife will go through it. The inner bark is moist and fibrous, and once it’s scored down to the wood, strips of bark will pull away easily. Separate the outer and inner bark after pulling off the bark in strips.
Once you’ve harvested all that slippery elm goodness, preppers suggest tea as the simplest way to ingest it. Herbalists also suggest taking slippery elm bark with other medicines because it has a coating effect.
It will coat the digestive tract to help other meds adhere where they’re most needed.
Oak
Believe it or not, oak trees do more than produce acorns. Their bark and leaves contain tannins, which have many antiviral and antiseptic qualities. Oak tree varieties help with chronic mucus discharges, diarrhea, and sore throats.
White oak bark tea, in particular, can be beneficial in treating the throat and stomach. It can also be made into a wash for skin issues like burns, poison ivy, and other wounds. And, of course, we can’t forget about the delicious acorns.
The delicious nuts have a nutrient-rich profile containing starches, oils, proteins, minerals (like calcium, phosphorus, and potassium), and several B vitamins. Acorns also contain plant sugars and tannins.
All oak parts – wood, bark, leaves, acorns, and gallnuts – have been used in survival medicine since ancient times.
Poplar
In the past, Native Americans used poplar as a natural alternative to medicine. It’s been known to help with various skin issues and physical ailments for years. Poplar trees have incredible medicinal qualities.
Use poplar concoctions to help with many issues: sore muscles, headaches, eczema, gout, phlegm, rheumatic pain, scurvy, and as an herbal medicine for cough.
They grow wild in many places across North America and may forage as early as late January. The harvesting window for this plant is short, at least for the buds, because they are actually tiny bound-up leaves.
You’ll know it’s time to harvest once the buds start swelling on the ends and middles of the branches. Since the branches are often relatively high, you’ll need a ladder or be agile enough to climb the tree.
Unfortunately, leaf harvesting is relatively slow; each must be hand-gathered individually.
To gather the poplar buds, snap them off the ends of the branch. Usually, they grow in clusters of three to six. Look out for the resin, as well, as it’s the medicinal power of these tiny leaf buds.
Poplar resin emits a lovely, sweet, and warm scent. It might get all over your fingers during the harvest, so use it to make an infused oil or treatment tincture.
Walnut
Many parts of the walnut tree can heal humans from the inside out. The husks are antifungal, rich in manganese, and have skin-healing properties. Walnut tree bark can be powdered and applied to wounds for reduced swelling and quicker healing.
Walnut leaf tea can increase circulation, energy, and digestion, and fresh bark when applied to the temples, is known to help relieve headaches.
Those who don’t love tea can still rub fresh walnut husks directly onto ringworms. Walnuts provide plenty of nutrients.
If you want to forage walnuts, you’ll need a bucket, gloves, and a stir-sick. Gather your walnuts; note that black walnuts have a characteristic green husk, almost like a tennis ball.
This husk contains a chemical called juglone that sticks and prevents things from growing near the black walnut tree, acting as a natural weed control.
Black walnuts can be found in the urban backyard and the wild. They’re easiest to find in areas with frequent squirrel activity. Walnut trees produce a crop of walnuts about every other year.
Step on the walnuts, and with a gentle twist, the husks will come right off. After de-husking them, it’s time to clean them up! Fill enough water to cover the walnuts, stir like crazy, rinse, and repeat until clean.
Finally, you can set your walnuts out to dry. Please put them in a paper bag or anything else to allow airflow. Soon, you’ll be enjoying some delicious and nutritious walnuts!
Elder
Elderberry may already be on your herbal medicine list if you’re a prepper. But did you know its leaves, flowers, and bark are just as incredible? Used in teas, tinctures, and oils, elder trees have endless qualities.
The berries of an elder can be used to make tea that benefits the blood and lungs. Root bark tea can help clear congestion and relieve headaches. Cold tea made from the flowers can also assist in reducing inflammation when placed on the eyes.
Elderflowers are used to create special sunburn and blemish healing water. When working with an oil from the flower, soothing balms are incredible. You can use the flowers you forage as a syrup, nutritional supplement, and in cosmetics.
Harvesting elderflowers is a late spring tradition in many parts of the world. These trees grow in temperate regions, especially in the northern hemisphere. The trees or flowers grow wild in ditches, roadsides, and swampy areas.
If you have a mesh bag, it is best to harvest the flowers. Take blooms during a cool part of the day and keep your harvested flowers out of the sun. Clasp your fingers at the flower cluster’s base and pull to get them.
You can use this form of naturopathic medicine fresh or preserve them for later use. To save them, hang the umbels upside down for a few days until they’re dry.
Once dried, rub off the little blooms with your hands and try making an elderflower syrup for your next therapeutic tea.
Cedar
If you’re looking for a vitamin C source during survival, cedar might be your new best friend. This tree’s twigs, leaves, and bark are often used to treat physical ailments. The red cedar, in particular, is one of the best varieties.
Cedar tea is commonly ingested for healing chest colds, flu, and rheumatic pain. In addition, it can aid with urinary tract issues, fevers, skin infections, ringworm, and bronchitis. The leaves are easy to infuse in oil and smell amazing when used on the skin.
Most preppers recommend using the leaves to make a DIY cedar tea. Gather ½ cups of leaves and put about three cups of boiling water over top. Cover the jar and allow it to steep for at least 15 minutes before drinking.
Be sure not to drink cedar tea every single day. While it can be a great healer, it should only be used minimally for bronchial issues and helping with breathing or other health issues. You can, however, steep the tea overnight and use it externally as an ointment much more often.
If you have frequent pain or a pressing sickness, use the ointment thrice daily. Those with fungal issues like ringworm or athlete’s foot will experience rapid healing after using a cedar concoction.
The final option for using cedar externally is tincturing it with alcohol.
Beech
Underrated but iconic, the beech tree is a must-know. The ancient Greeks believed that beechnuts were humans’ first food. While the nuts are edible, we don’t consume them in large quantities now.
This tree’s qualities extend far beyond the beechnut. When used in tea, it can help cleanse the blood and heal lung ailments like tuberculosis. You can also use the tea externally as a wash for poison ivy or to help with frostbites and burns.
Due to the bark’s astringent effect, many have used it for minor skin complaints like boils and piles. The leaves have also been eaten as a salad veggie to add crunch and flavor. If you’re not using beech to heal or feed yourself and your family, make some beautiful furniture or utensils out of its wood.
Alder
Unlike many other trees, alders are unique and incredible because they build a strong community. Seeds fly in the wind and rain down on disturbed soils in the wake of fire, landslides, or clearcuts. Seedlings grow as much as three feet per year.
Regarding alder’s healing qualities, the leaves and bark can be infused in tea to make an excellent wound wash. It can also aid with tonsilitis, fevers, or dry-up breast milk.
The inner bark, in particular, offers the most potent natural medicine for blood pressure and other ailments.
Alder trees’ inner bark soothes inflammation, fights infection, and promotes healing. It supports liver functions (like the breakdown of wastes), and the formation of bile to assist with fat digestion.
Alder bark would be incredible after a bloating meal that leaves your stomach in shambles.
The inner bark of alder trees is also antimicrobial and is used to treat internal and topical infections. Skin disorders, including acne and boils, may respond well to both internal and topical use of alder. Its astringent qualities help it tighten inflamed tissue.
Alder trees grow along the Pacific coast from Alaska to central California. They are harvested in February or March before the leaves emerge. For leaf buds, look for recently fallen trees or branches or trees with low-hanging branches.
If you are harvesting bark from the alder’s trunk, only take a narrow strip, about the width of your hand, so the tree can keep on thriving. Separate the inner bark from the outer so you can experience all that inner goodness.
However, you don’t need to do this on the smaller branches and twigs because the bark is so thin there.
Apple
You already know apple trees and their delicious red (or green or yellow) fruits. But did you know their bark is incredible, too? Apple trees and their fruit can serve as a survival superfood and medicine in various ways.
Apple tree bark can be used to make tea, which helps with fevers. The fruit is rich in iron, magnesium, potassium, and vitamins B, B2, and C. Apples can aid in both diarrhea (eating peeled apples) and constipation (stewed and unpeeled).
When consumed regularly, apples have also been known to enhance restful sleep. Raw apple cider can help correct and restore bacteria in the bowels. Using it as an external wash can even help clear the skin.
Whether using them as a food source or to heal some stomach issues, knowing how to forage the best apples is essential. Know that apples ripen from outside of the tree towards the trunk.
So, if you’re unsure of ripeness, stick to apples farthest from the tree’s base.
Look for firm apples with no nicks or bruises. Ripe apples are crisp and firm to the touch, not mushy. When you see a reasonable one, lift the apple upwards and twist it to release it from the tree.
Be sure not to pull the fruit downwards or shake the tree branch. Once you’ve got it, grasp the apple with the palm of your hand instead of your fingers. Check the skin – if it’s smooth and bruise-free, you’re ready to enjoy it!
This video has been included to clarify the topic. Credit goes to AlfieAesthetics
Some Related Questions
How do you identify medicinal trees safely?
Identifying medicinal trees safely involves learning from experienced herbalists through workshops or guided walks, using well-reviewed field guides or reputable online resources, and always verifying your findings across multiple sources.
Observing the specific characteristics like shape, color, texture, and growth location of the trees is crucial.
What are the risks of foraging for medicinal trees?
The risks associated with foraging for medicinal trees include the potential for misidentifying plants, which can be dangerous, the environmental impact of overharvesting, legal issues surrounding unauthorized foraging, and possible health complications from incorrect usage of herbal remedies.
How can one minimize the environmental impact while foraging?
To minimize the environmental impact, sustainable harvesting involves taking only what is needed and avoiding areas with endangered plant populations.
Adhering to local foraging guidelines and employing techniques that do not damage the plant or its habitat can also help preserve natural resources.
Can foraging for medicinal trees be done in urban areas?
Yes, foraging can be done in urban areas, though it requires consideration of potential pollutants and adherence to local laws that might restrict foraging activities, especially in public parks. Urban environments may offer a more limited variety of medicinal trees than rural areas.
Are there any legal concerns about foraging medicinal trees?
Legal restrictions on foraging may vary depending on location. For example, permission to forage on private property or in protected areas and possibly a permit may be required, primarily if the foraging is intended for commercial use.
How should one use tree parts for medicinal purposes?
Tree parts can be used in various forms, such as teas, tinctures, and poultices. Preparing these correctly and being cautious with dosages, particularly new remedies, is essential.
Proper drying and storing plant materials are also crucial to maintaining their medicinal properties.
Final Words
Foraging trees for natural medicine requires a broad understanding and knowledge of the different tree species and their associated medicinal values. Identifying these trees is the first step in ensuring the correct use of their components for medicinal purposes.
It’s equally significant to observe safe foraging practices, ensuring that collection is done from uncontaminated areas and respecting protected zones to maintain ecological balance.
After collecting the necessary tree parts, careful preparation and storage are essential to preserve their medicinal properties. It’s crucial to use these parts wisely, understanding that each may have unique medicinal properties and require specific preparation methods.
Ethical considerations should always be at the forefront of foraging activities. Sustainable harvesting methods must be employed to prevent the depletion of the tree population and irreversible harm to the ecosystems they support.
Over-harvesting affects not only the trees but also the biodiversity that is dependent on them.
Lastly, potential risks associated with foraging trees for natural medicine must be considered. While many trees offer beneficial medicinal properties, some can also have harmful effects due to toxicity, possible side effects, or allergies.
Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of these aspects is vital for anyone involved in foraging trees for natural medicine.
Now that you know some of the best trees to forage for medicine, staying healthy through survival situations should be much easier. Next time you’re on a nature walk or adventuring through the backyard, identify some trees and practice your foraging skills.
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