im pretty sure just the needles.

 

Long ago, when I was homeless and living in the forest and along the rivers, I would make tea from the pine family of trees because it has Vitamin C. I used the needles, also known as leaves in botony. If you chew on the needles, that helps to get vitamins too. When I had a cold, I would breathe in the steam and drink the tea.

 

u just use the needles and let it soak like normal tea. i;ve done it before with lodgepole pine. it was decent.

 

Yellow pine is OK. Loblolly if you have to. Good source of Viet. A and C. Supposed have more C than a lemon.

Just take the needles and let them steep in hot water. Personally I like to add some honey.

 

Early sailors who arrived on the North American continent were often stricken with scurvy.

When treated by the indigenous people, they were given pine tea. Which cured the scurvy.

 

Nevermind...

 

nevermind

Are you serious Clark.:

No but serious all kidding aside FJ, is this a fact or a myth? I have heard a lot of good things about pine needle, but I have never heard any harmful effects.

I looked it up on Web MD, but they have no research. Maybe it is not popular enough.

 

Besides the needles, you can also use the innerbark or sap. But the needles are most common.

 

 

yup, just the needles.
heck, add some grass roots and dandelion to it too if you can!

 

Crush em'

Most evergreen needles have a waxy-like protective coating on them. Take a close look. If you pound them with a rock a bit it will release a lot more of the medicinal and tasty qualities of it.

 

you cant cut them up and steep them

Most evergreen needles have a waxy-like protective coating on them. Take a close look. If you pound them with a rock a bit it will release a lot more of the medicinal and tasty qualities of it.

i just cut them up and soak them for 2 min or so in hot water. don't boil them. this will help release the vitamins.

 

I've made it with Kahikatea Pine which was nice.

The soft new needles towards the end of the branch are also less bitter than the harder dark green needles.

 

its good.. i make the tea everytime i am around a pine tree and a fire... not too bad either. tastes like.... mmmm.. pine needle tea..

I have also heard it has a ton of vitamin C and a...

 

When I first made pine needle tea, I was expecting it to taste bad. I was really surprised to find it very delicious!

To me it has a somewhat sweet taste as is, so I don't add anything to it.

I have a Red Pine and a big Norway Spruce in my yard, and I'd say the red pine tastes slightly more acrid, and the Norway spruce slightly less pungent (although that could be due to my brew times).

 

also while hiking, you can also just chew on the spruce bough tips (new growth) as a snack for some vitamins. jsut make sure it is a spruce tree u are taking a bite from first!

 

gotta love pine tea! chewing on needles cured my bosses nasty sore throat in an hour, its good stuff! interesting about the contraceptive effect...

 

I know about it because I study ethnobotany and botany in relation to edible and medicinal plants as a hobby its good to know as well since all drugs made today for the most part are either compounds derived from or synthisized compounds found naturaly in plants and the big pharmasuticals cant patent a plant so they patent the pills

 

i am just beginning to get into wild edibles and such, i got this book for xmas Amazon.com: The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants (9780976626602): Samuel Thayer: Books and have already learned quite alot from it, although it is winter here and not the time to go foraging. any other info you could send my way would be greatly appreciated!

 

I've never heard that before.

Do you have some kind of reference?

 

nevermind....

 

Alright, I skimmed through that article, and looked around on google as well, and I can find no information regarding the effects of isocupressic acid (the toxin said to have abortifacient qualities) in humans.

Interesting though.

 

Yeah I guess I should have specified a little better. Between spruce and pine that is. My neighbor has a little spruce christmas tree growing in his front yard. That's the closest one I have access to and he wouldn't have a problem with me pickin some needles off it.

 

you gotta watch how much you drink of that pine tea, it has been tested and found that more then a cup or two a day for a long period of time has terrible kidney damaging effects. Also, i believe there were reports of liver damage too. (taken from Medicinal wild plants of north america; Stackpole books) Although, i still enjoy a good cup of white pine needle tea

 

Someone may have mentioned it already but pine tea is supposedly and excellent source of Vitamin C. At least the guy on a survival show said so.

 

since threads about pine needle tee always arise every month, why dont we get a thread about pine needle tea made sticky?

 

I'd rather chew on aluminum foil......btw, I don't like Gin , either.....Strawberries, Kiwis, Mangos, Jubjubes, Guava, Persimmon, Barbados cherry and oranges( grapefruit, Loquats, Kumquats, etc) and berries all have Vit C.......btw, you can only process so much Vit C( then you pee it out)........An orange has 53MG......a Barbados Cherry- 1700( each).........Jubjube- 500...Kiwi-98-180......Rosehips- 1200-2500. RDA is 60mg( at a time- 200 total)....btw, all those grow wild in Florida.

 

I've read in multiple articles that there is a risk of spontaneous miscarriage for pregnant women ingesting the tea.

 

You mean you read multiple entries ON THE INTERNET that pine needle tea can cause miscarriages in humans. That is why the internet, home of the ignorant cut and past, is NOT a good source of information. Libraries still rule.

If you take pine pitch. Distill that, one of its distillates if consumed in huge quanfities can cause miscarriages. Read a concentrated form of one distillage in the pitch. That is a long ways from what is in a few needles.

Indeed, Greeks have been drinking retsina for thousands of years, that is, white wine flavored with pine pitch.

 

I'll believe it when I see some kind of empirical data regarding miscarriage in Humans from pinus sp.

As far as I can tell, it only applies to late-stage pregnancy cows.

 

look at all my posts on this thread that the mods got ahold of had lots of links about that topic wilst most of the data is related to cattle the indians and other primitive peoples used it for that effect i believe pliny the elder also wrote on it but i dont feel like getting the boot so pm me if you want more info