I live in Norway, and right now its summer time, so ideally not the best time to harvest, but the last few days i have made a "cold brew" tea w birch bark. Filled a glass of the bark and water and let i stand i the sun for two days. yummy
Where you found your river birch, did you find other variety of birches? I planted 7 years ago 25 River birches from the state conservation department and have a whole mess of trees running wild spreading on me. I thought they were river, but turns out sweet birch settled in as well as a paper so all three varieties are filling in an area which once was black locust. They grow real fast. There is even a quacking aspen that got in there somehow. Sweet birch has that wintergreen smell in it and doesn't exfoliate when older like the rusty brown river birch or white paper birch. I don't think birch grows as a specimen. You go back there, you take another look? A mature sweet birch's bark looks like a black cherries. Perhaps the canopy was too high up and you missed sight of the leaves as they had dropped from winter?
there is a native fellow out western canada, he does bark teas as medicines, wish he had a book, do you know of any ,or any other web sites? would love to have that info
Peterson Field Guides do books on edible plants and medicinal plants. It will tell you what part is edible and how used. My mom bought them when I was a kid and I grew up reading them every summer cover to cover. What I know off hand, Willow type and sweet birch are used like aspirin for headaches. Some viburnums, black haw or highbush cranberry or the European cousin to the highbush cranberry, Guelder Rose which colonized here so you could find either, that bark treats menstrual cramps. People can use the bark of black cherry for a cough medicine, but its dangerous as the bitter almond flavoring is from the cyanide in the cherry trees. Sassafras the leaves and twigs have a fruit loops like flavor as a tea and is for tummy aches, the roots bark are the root beer flavoring and is the real health tonic. Root beer originally was a health tonic and had a medicinal taste to it. Shagbark hickory's bark flakes and people can peel loose pieces to make a sweet syrup boiling it on the stove in water, but I don't know what is medicinal in that. I almost forgot, Slippery Elms bark makes a gruel which heals ulcers in the GI track. People have killed trees girdling them, where they remove the bark all the way around and that bark and surface green right underneath the bark (the true stuff people are trying to get at) where the medicine is, the cambion layer, carries the trees food up the height of the tree so they die when it is removed. Rodents and rabbits due that all the time to young trees, killing them. We are suppose to know better. Best time to gather bark of the medicinal and edible trees are after storms if the branches fell and are still fresh. Take from the still attached branches if you must, but never take from the trunk.
I like this guy, seems cool and want some birch tea. (Do birch beer if you haven’t already)
Nicely done and well explained.
Looks like we have the same interests
Share the knowledge my friend.
Atb
Steve
Thank you
I came here after playing the game "The Long Dark", to see, wether this is actually a thing people do.
Fr, and it helps you live 🔥💯
Same
I live in Norway, and right now its summer time, so ideally not the best time to harvest, but the last few days i have made a "cold brew" tea w birch bark. Filled a glass of the bark and water and let i stand i the sun for two days. yummy
Never heard of it. I would like to try it.
Where you found your river birch, did you find other variety of birches? I planted 7 years ago 25 River birches from the state conservation department and have a whole mess of trees running wild spreading on me. I thought they were river, but turns out sweet birch settled in as well as a paper so all three varieties are filling in an area which once was black locust. They grow real fast. There is even a quacking aspen that got in there somehow. Sweet birch has that wintergreen smell in it and doesn't exfoliate when older like the rusty brown river birch or white paper birch. I don't think birch grows as a specimen. You go back there, you take another look? A mature sweet birch's bark looks like a black cherries. Perhaps the canopy was too high up and you missed sight of the leaves as they had dropped from winter?
there is a native fellow out western canada, he does bark teas as medicines, wish he had a book, do you know of any ,or any other web sites? would love to have that info
Peterson Field Guides do books on edible plants and medicinal plants. It will tell you what part is edible and how used. My mom bought them when I was a kid and I grew up reading them every summer cover to cover. What I know off hand, Willow type and sweet birch are used like aspirin for headaches. Some viburnums, black haw or highbush cranberry or the European cousin to the highbush cranberry, Guelder Rose which colonized here so you could find either, that bark treats menstrual cramps. People can use the bark of black cherry for a cough medicine, but its dangerous as the bitter almond flavoring is from the cyanide in the cherry trees. Sassafras the leaves and twigs have a fruit loops like flavor as a tea and is for tummy aches, the roots bark are the root beer flavoring and is the real health tonic. Root beer originally was a health tonic and had a medicinal taste to it. Shagbark hickory's bark flakes and people can peel loose pieces to make a sweet syrup boiling it on the stove in water, but I don't know what is medicinal in that. I almost forgot, Slippery Elms bark makes a gruel which heals ulcers in the GI track. People have killed trees girdling them, where they remove the bark all the way around and that bark and surface green right underneath the bark (the true stuff people are trying to get at) where the medicine is, the cambion layer, carries the trees food up the height of the tree so they die when it is removed. Rodents and rabbits due that all the time to young trees, killing them. We are suppose to know better. Best time to gather bark of the medicinal and edible trees are after storms if the branches fell and are still fresh. Take from the still attached branches if you must, but never take from the trunk.