Wild Cherry Tree Medicinal Use for General Pain Reliever, Fevers Diarrhea,,Lymphatic System Irritated Eyes and Skin, Intestinal Worms

By Liliana Usvat    
Blog 339-365

Other Names

• Black Cherry
• Prunus Serotina
• Rum Cherry, 
• ehrh, 
• wild cherry, 
• capulin

  It is a member of the rose family.

Description

The black cherry tree produces masses of white, fragrant blossoms that bloom later than most trees.  They are small, have five petals, and grow in long clusters.  The cherries themselves ripen in the summer are a very dark red.  They are around 1/3 inch in diameter and have a single stone in them.
 
The black cherry tree is a large and notably straight-growing tree that can reach up to 100 feet tall.  The bark of the mature tree is very dark and breaks into many upturned plates.  Black cherry leaves are a glossy green, lance-shaped with fine teeth, and are 2-5 inches long.  The leaves produce cyanide, which has a distinctive cherry-like smell and is harmless to humans in small doses (Cook).

Plant Type: Medium to Large Tree
Leaf Type: Deciduous
Forest Garden Use: Canopy Tree
Cultivars/Varieties: Minimally improved; few cultivars available

Pollination: Self-Pollinating/Self-Fertile
Flowering: Late spring/early summer (May-July depending on where it is planted

Life Span:
Years to Begin Bearing: 10 years,
Years to Maximum Bearing: 30+ years, but decent crops can be had on 10 year old trees
Years of Useful Life: 100+ years, but some individuals can live to over twice that age

Medicinal Uses
 
The black cherry tree was extremely important medicinally to the American Indians.  The dried inner tree bark was commonly used to make a tea or infusion that was treated for a variety of symptoms, including 

•  colds, 
• fevers, 
• diarrhea, 
• labor pains, and 
• general pain reliever due to its tranquilizing and sedative qualities (Peirce). 
• In the Appalachians, the bark was used as a cough remedy and sedative

There are many other benefits that can be earned from drinking a cup of wild cherry bark tea. Among these, it is prominently used as a digestive aid among herbalists, often recommend to aid with common issues such as diarrhea, indigestion, and gas build up. A cup of this herbal tea can be helpful after a heavy meal, by supporting and encouraging proper digestion. 

 The active ingredient in Wild Cherry Bark is hydrocyanic acid, which works 

• to cleanse and
•  decongest the lungs, 
• blood, and 
• lymphatic system. 
• Combined with other respiratory herbs, it can help control asthma. 
• A cold brew of the bark can also be used as a calming wash for irritated eyes and skin. 

The root was also used by American Indians for things such 

• intestinal worms, 
• burns, 
• cold sores, and other
•  dermatological symptoms.  

The fruit was used to make 

•  cough syrups by tribes such as the Delaware.  

The early settlers followed this practice and black cherry continues to be used in syrups in folk medicine.  In fact, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia listed the black cherry bark syrup as a 

• “mild sedative and expectorant to clear congestion” (Peirce).

 Folk Uses

 

 Wild Cherry, or chokecherry, was an important food for the Native Americans of the Northern Rockies, Northern Plains, and Boreal forests of Canada and the US, and was also used medicinally to treat colds, fevers, and stomach problems.

 It was also an ingredient used in a smoking mixture called kinnikinnick. 

The berries have been used by Native Americans and Colonists alike to make jams, jellies, wines, and syrups. 

It is the official fruit of North Dakota due to it’s frequent occurrences at important archeological digs. The leaves, especially when wilted, are toxic to livestock such as horses, goats, cattle, and some wild animals.


Dosage
 
1 teaspoon of the dried bark or powder, infused into a cup of water for 15 minutes, three times daily, or a tincture of 1-2 ml three times daily. It can also be prepared in similar doses as a decoction or cough syrup.

Trivia:

• The oldest documented Black Cherry tree is in the U.S. and was 258 years old.
• Black Cherry Trees are host to a large variety of caterpillars.
• It has been very invasive in Europe where it was used as an ornamental and unique fruit tree.
• Cherry Bounce is a liqueur of cherries steeped in brandy, rum, or whiskey, and it was a popular drink in the Colonial United States. 

 In fact, we still have a recipe from Martha Washington, the first First Lady:

 

•   “Extract the Juice of 20 pounds of well ripend Morrella Cherrys 
• Add to this 10 quarts of Old French brandy and sweeten it with White Sugar to your taste—To 5 Gallons of this mixture add 
• one ounce of Spice Such as Cinnamon, Cloves and Nutmegs of each an Equal quantity Slightly bruis’d and 
• a pint and half of Cherry kernels that have been gently broken in a mortar—
• After the liquor has fermented let it Stand Close-Stoped for a month or Six weeks—then bottle it remembering to put a lump of Loaf Sugar into each bottle.”

Legends, Myths and Stories

Dried native wild fruits, such as the chokecherry and the June berry, were articles of intertribal commerce for Native Americans. 

The agricultural tribes prepared some of these for themselves, but being occupied with the care of their cultivated crops they did not put up such great quantities of them as did the non-agricultural tribes on the high plains. 

Consequently, the agricultural tribes traded surplus products of their crops for the surplus products of the non-agricultural tribes. 

 When the Arikaras traded with the Dakotas, they paid 1 hunansadu (roughly an arms length) of shelled corn for 1/2 hunansadu of chokecherries.

 When they bought dried June berries, they paid for them at the same rate as for chokecherries. June berries are harder to gather than chokecherries, but easier to prepare by drying. 

The chokecherries are easy to gather, but the process of pounding them to a pulp, shaping this pulp into cakes and drying them is laborious; hence they were equal in price.

Native Americans made a beautiful red dye from the juice.
Links 

http://autumnsnaketongue.tumblr.com/post/28761318340/medicinal-properties-of-the-wild-cherry-herb

http://www.aihd.ku.edu/foods/agave.html 

http://tcpermaculture.blogspot.ca/2011/12/permaculture-plants-black-cherry-tree.html 

http://www.wildcherrybark.net/ 

http://permacultureglobal.org/

Slippery Elm has Been Used as Herbal Remedy by Native Americans

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 161 -365

The slippery elm is native to eastern Canada and the eastern and central United States where it is found mostly in the Appalachian Mountains. Its name refers to the slippery consistency the inner bark assumes when it is chewed or mixed with water. Slippery elm inner bark has been used historically as a demulcent, emollient, nutritive, astringent, anti-tussive, and vulnerary. It is included as one of four primary ingredients in the herbal cancer remedy, Essiac, and in a number of Essiac-like products such as Flor-Essence.

Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. The genus first appeared in the Miocene geological period about 20 million years ago, originating in what is now central Asia.
 
During the 18th and 19th centuries, elm cultivars enjoyed much popularity as ornamentals in Europe by virtue of their rapid growth and variety of foliage and forms

Viticulture

The Romans, and more recently the Italians, used to plant elms in vineyards as supports for vines. Lopped at three metres, the elms' quick growth, twiggy lateral branches, light shade and root-suckering made them ideal trees for this purpose.
 
Ovid in his Amores characterizes the elm as "loving the vine": ulmus amat vitem, vitis non deserit ulmum (:the elm loves the vine, the vine does not desert the elm) and the ancients spoke of the "marriage" between elm and vine.

Medicinal products

Slippery Elm has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy by Native Americans. The inner bark of the slippery elm tree is used medicinally, both internally and topically. Internally, it has been used to treat sore throats and diarrhea, and externally, slippery elm has been used to treat various inflammatory skin problems like wounds, boils, ulcers, and burns.

 

The mucilaginous inner bark of the Slippery Elm Ulmus rubra has long been used as a demulcent.

A demulcent (derived from the Latin: demulcere "caress") is an agent that forms a soothing film over a mucous membrane, relieving minor pain and inflammation of the membrane. Demulcents are sometimes referred to as mucoprotective agents. Demulcents such as pectin, glycerin, honey, and syrup are common ingredients in cough mixtures. These demulcents will coat the throat and relieve the irritation causing the cough. They can be used to treat any type of cough, but are particularly useful to treat dry coughs. Some demulcents may not be suitable for diabetics as they are based on sugar

 

Slippery elm is a tree. The inner bark (not the whole bark) is used as medicine.

People take slippery elm for coughs, sore throat, colic, diarrhea, constipation, hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bladder and urinary tract infections, syphilis, herpes, and for expelling tapeworms. It is also used for protecting against stomach and duodenal ulcers, for colitis, diverticulitis, GI inflammation, and too much stomach acid. Slippery elm is also taken by mouth to cause an abortion.

Slippery elm is applied to the skin for wounds, burns, gout, rheumatism, cold sores, boils, abscesses, ulcers, toothaches, sore throat, and as a lubricant to ease labor.

In manufacturing, slippery elm is used in some baby foods and adult nutritionals, and in some oral lozenges used for soothing throat pain.

The late Euell Gibbons recommended pouring a pint of boiling water over an ounce of the coarsely ground inner bark, allowing the mixture to cool, and then adding the juice of one-half lemon and enough honey to sweeten the brew to taste. Our pioneer forebears treated colds with such a "lemonade" and it was especially recommended for feverish patients.

The outer bark of the slippery elm is reddish brown, deeply furrowed, and quite rough. It can be harvested any time of the year but peels from the tree most easily in the spring (when the sap is running). The juicy inner bark may then be pulled from the outer with little difficulty. Spread the cambium bark out on newspapers in a warm, dry room. Once it has dried, it may be stored (in sealed glass jars) and ground for use as desired.

The generally advised dosage of slippery elm is to take between 4 and 10 grams of the dried inner bark in capsule form three to four times a day.  You can also make a tea by boiling teaspoons-full of loose bark in a cup of water for ten to fifteen minutes, cooled before drinking.  Three to four cups of this tea can be drunk per day.  To use externally, mix coarse powdered bark with boiling water to make a poultice. - See more at: http://happyherbcompany.com/slippery-elm#sthash.mLjRrNGH.dpuf

The generally advised dosage of slippery elm is to take between 4 and 10 grams of the dried inner bark in capsule form three to four times a day.  You can also make a tea by boiling teaspoons-full of loose bark in a cup of water for ten to fifteen minutes, cooled before drinking.  Three to four cups of this tea can be drunk per day.  To use externally, mix coarse powdered bark with boiling water to make a poultice. - See more at: http://happyherbcompany.com/slippery-elm#sthash.mLjRrNGH.dpuf

How does it work?

Slippery elm contains chemicals that can help soothe sore throats. It can also cause mucous secretion which might be helpful for stomach and intestinal problems.

 

 There are no known side effects or safety issues with this plant.

Barks can be harvested with very little damage to a tree, and can even improve the health of a tree, much as pruning does. The most ecological way to harvest bark is to prune smaller branches from the tree using pruning shears or a small pruning saw.  It doesn't take many branches to supply a house with all it is needed for a year.  If larger quantities are needed  might consider taking a whole sapling if the tree grows in abundance and is in a crowded stand already.

To remove the bark from the branches, use the hand pruners to snip off any side branches and spurs.    Then  take a sharp paring knife or pocketknife and peel the bark in thin strips or shavings, much like peeling a carrot.  Be sure to cut deeply enough to get the inner bark, which will be slightly wet and also is usually green in color.  The different layers are easy to distinguish when you are peeling the branches. 

To peel the barks is to lay the branch flat on your cutting surface, and then take the knife and hold it perpendicularly (right angle) to the branch.  Then with a strong scraping motion, scrape back and forth vigorously.  This shreds the bark while it peels it and results in very nice finished product, no further need for cutting.  The shredding breaks up the fibers nicely, which is very helpful when you make medicinal preparations later.

Food

When dried and ground into a coarse meal, the sweetly fragrant and creamy white or pinkish inner bark of the slippery elm can be boiled into a porridge that looks and tastes very much like oatmeal. And, surprisingly enough, modern nutritionists have discovered that, when so prepared, the bark does indeed possess a food value about equal to that of oatmeal.

 

Slippery elm's inner bark, on the other hand, does have its other uses too. When ground to a fine powder, it makes a good extender for ordinary flour and can be included that way in a wide variety of recipes. And back before today's sugar-laden treats were so widely available, small boys were fond of stripping off pieces of this cambium bark and chewing it. Such a "chaw" makes a sweet-flavored, long-lasting chewing gum that both satisfies thirst and supplies a certain amount of nourishment.

History

It is recorded that, during their bitter winter at Valley Forge, George Washington's ragtag Revolutionary War soldiers lived through one 12-day period on little more than slippery elm porridge. And no one, of course, knows how many starving pioneer families scraped through their first winters on the American continent thanks to the same survival rations.