White pine medicine

& a shop restock!

Apothecary News: The shop is finally restocked for the first time this year! Salves and flower presses are now available and the Lunica Planner is also on sale. As mentioned, this is a small restock as I transition to doing smaller batches. I felt a very strong urge to slow way down, be a present part of the medicine making process, to sing the songs while I harvest, and ensure that connection is always strong between herb and herbalist.

Plus, in honor of eclipse season, free shipping on orders over $60 with code ECLIPSESHIP until 3/12!

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It is my most anticipated harvest of the year. Throughout the spring, summer and fall I watch the trees, looking for that aromatic resin that shimmers like forest gold. When a tree catches my eye, I make a mental note and tuck it away.

I wait as the plants sprout, bloom and return to the earth. I wait as the hunters venture into the woods, many of them leaving their litter behind like a trail of telltale breadcrumbs. I wait as they leave, not to return again until next fall. The geese retreat, the mosquitoes die back, the landscape turns to shades of rust and decay. Still I wait.

Then finally, in the very depths of winter I go. The forest is silent now. I spend days and weeks going back again and again to harvest the sweet resin that has pulled at my attention all year. I’ve tended the same trees for years now, knowing their rhythms as well as the plants in my own garden. My toes freeze and my legs become wonderfully sore in the pursuit, especially if the snow is deep.

Only excess resin is harvested from the tree. Always ensure there is more than enough left on the tree to seal the opening.

The Woodswoman Salve was the first offering I made for Woodspell and has continued to be a staple in so many medicine cabinets. Folks have sang its praises for all types of skin conditions from simple cuts and wounds to cold sores, eczema patches, C-section incisions, pimples, cysts, dishpan hands, and diaper rashes. I reach for a pine resin salve for essentially any skin complaint except for those weepy conditions like poison ivy.

The reason a pine resin salve is so effective for most skin conditions is because of its potent antiseptic and antimicrobial effects. Many studies have shown that the resin of Pinus species inhibit the growth of all tested bacteria. Potent volatile oils such as pinene, limonene, camphene, terpinene, and many more combine to make a protective plant potion. Adding in the moisturizing and nourishing effects of beeswax within a salve compliments the medicine of pine.

Even without studies, all we have to do to understand this medicine is observe the pine tree itself. Pine resin oozes out from places on a tree where a wound has opened from incidents such as insect damage, broken branches. The resin pours forth to cover the wound, eventually hardening into a bark-like material. Just as the resin heals a tree of its external wounds, it also heals the human skin of similar wounds.

In many traditional societies, the pine trees were actually tapped as you would a maple tree to harvest the resin. In Turkey for example, the Turkish red pine (Pinus brutia) was tapped for resin to create turpentine which was used for wood preservation. The resin was also used medicinally both externally and internally to address respiratory and digestive issues. It was simply chewed like a gummy candy for internal issues or applied directly to a wound for external issues.

I typically am drawn to mid-growth white pine (Pinus strobus) forests for resin foraging as the resin seems to be most abundant in this species and age.

White pine also just calls to a quite piece of me. When I moved to the forest, the white pine was the first place that felt like home. There is a large old white pine that escaped the saw nearby. I would sit between the roots of this grandmother tree and look up at the branches as they billowed softly in the wind. Everything feels good and right when in the presence of the white pine.

Indeed, the indigenous Ojibwe people of this land referred to white pine as a “tree of peace”. A potent pine salve can even be massaged onto pulse points to soothe an unsettled nervous system. Nothing brings one back to the forest like the medicine of pine.

The resin of course is only part of pine’s medicine. The needles, bark and pollen are all packed with medicine, available year round with its evergreen vitality. When people ask what my favorite medicine plant is, it’s always a difficult question to answer, but white pine holds a high spot on my list of devotions.

Much love,

Val