Fast Growing Trees Elberta Peach Tree Medicinal Uses

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 283-365

Decide to plant a tree this year. Here is an idea.

Elberta Peaches are the world’s most famous peaches because of their abundance of taste, attractive color and disease resistance. 

These trees give you very large peaches that are great for canning, snacking and baking.

Elberta Peach Trees are the most disease resistant peach trees available. You no longer have to worry about your tree or your peaches!

These trees are even insect resistant... meaning you can grow your peaches organically. No more spraying chemicals on your fruit!

They ripen to a deep, golden yellow with a blush of red.

Your tree has been continually pruned back to encourage more branches.  The additional limbs produce significantly more fruit and produce it quicker.

Elberta peach trees are normally planted in pairs so they can pollinate each other. This pollination causes your trees to produce more fruit!

Elberta Peach Trees grow rapidly, and mature quickly to a height of 15 feet. The faster they grow, the sooner they reward you with delicious fruit. 

It's Easy to Plant your Elberta Peach Tree

Step 1 - Dig Your HoleSelect a site with full to partial sun and moist or well drained soil for your Elberta Peach Tree. First, dig each hole so that it is just shallower than the root ball and at least twice the width. Then loosen the soil in the planting hole so the roots can easily break through. Use your shovel or try dragging the points of a pitch fork along the sides and bottom of the hole.

Step 2 - Place Your PlantNext, separate the roots of your Elberta Peach Tree gently with your fingers and position them downward in the hole. The top of the root flare, where the roots end and the trunk begins, should be about an inch above the surrounding soil. Then make sure the plant is exactly vertical in the hole. To make it just right, use a level.

Step 3 - Backfill Your Hole As you backfill the hole, apply water to remove air pockets. Remove debris like stones and grass and completely break up any dirt clumps. Water your Elberta Peach Tree again after the transplant is complete. To help retain some of that moisture, it's recommended that you place mulch around each plant to a depth of 2"-3" up to but not touching the trunk. Organic mulches such as wood chips also help to better soil structure as they decompose. Medicinal use:  Traditionally, bark and leaves have been used in cases of whooping coughs and bronchitis. Nowadays, peach leaves are usually recommended in treatment of irritated digestive tract.  Peach kernel oil is said to stimulate hair growth, and is commonly used as a mosturiser and for massage.  Tea made from the leaves acts as an excellent kidney cleanser.  Fruit contains high percentage of water, and is an excellent laxative. It is helpful in eliminating toxins, an usually included in the weight-loss programs.  Cooked and purred Peach fruit is extremely helpful in cases of stomach ulcers, bowel inflammations and colitis. Fresh Peach stimulates digetion, regulates bowel and alkalinizes blood stream.   Peaches and plum extracts were effective in killing even the most aggressive types of breast cancer cells and did not harm normal healthy cells in the process.

Indigenous Rights and Native Forests

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 282-365

The destruction of the world’s remaining native forests and related ecosystems threatens the existence of forest-dependent and indigenous peoples around the globe.

Indigenous and rural communities rely on native forests for water, food, medicines, shelter, livelihoods, and culture.  

Indigenous communities all over the world have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral lands to make room for dam mega-projects, mining operations, oil extraction, plantations, logging ooperations, bio-prospecting, and other forms of land, resource and cultural theft.

The new focus on wood as a future source of biofuel (cellulose ethanol) is becoming the newest great threat to the world’s forests and Indigenous Peoples.  The existing demand for wood-based products is already causing massive deforestation around the world. Creating a huge new demand for wood to produce ethanol will exponentially increase this global deforestation. The world’s forest-dependent peoples will pay the highest price for the consumption of the North.  

Existing plantations of trees and future plantations of genetically engineered (GE) trees also threaten native forests and indigenous communities.  Contamination of native forests with GE tree pollen or seeds will upset the ecological balance of forests leading to wide ranging impacts.  Some studies suggest that pollen from certain GE trees may be toxic to people who inhale it. 

Additional studies have found that eucalyptus trees can host a deadly pathogenic fungus:Cryptococcus gattii. This fungus can cause fatal fungal meningitis in people that inhale its spores.  Huge plantations of eucalyptus for paper or biofuels may present a serious health threat to nearby communities by creating excellent habitat for this pathogenic fungus.  Industry is currently engineering eucalyptus trees for plantations in Brazil and the U.S. South, where they could pose a threat to communities and forests.

Indigenous peoples in Canada, the United States and throughout the Americas hold valuable land and water resources that have long been exploited by the provincial, state and federal governments and by corporations trying to meet the energy needs of an industrialized world. 

Indigenous peoples have disproportionately suffered impacts due to the production and use of energy resources – coal mining, uranium mining, oil and gas extraction, coal bed methane, nuclear power and hydropower development – yet are among those who benefit least from these energy developments. Indigenous peoples face inequity over the control of, and access to, sustainable energy and energy services. 

Territories where Indigenous peoples live are resource rich and serve as the base from which governments and corporations extract wealth yet are areas where the most severe form of poverty exists.

Ten thousand years ago, ancestors of today’s Coquille Indians lived along the southern Oregon coast from Coos Bay to Cape Blanco and along the inland valleys of the Coquille River drainage. A common misconception among European Americans is that Indians lived passively within their environment, “at one with nature.” On the contrary, aboriginal peoples actively managed their landscape for their own objectives, using the technologies available to them.

n the middle decades of the 1800s, the Indians of the Oregon coast were abruptly cast out of their lands, and European American settlers moved in. Prairies became pastures, valleys became farm fields, forests were cut down, wild animals and plants were replaced with domestic ones. Property lines were inked on maps, the new owners halted Indian burning, and trees started to encroach on the meadows.

In 1851 and 1855, the Coquilles and neighboring tribes signed treaties that would have allowed them to keep some of their ancestral homelands. Congress never ratified these treaties. Instead, it passed land claim laws in the 1850s and 1860s that opened the door to white settlement of Indian lands. By 1856 most Coquilles had been forcibly removed to the Coast Reservation, north of the Umpqua River.

The next hundred years were ones of diaspora for the Coquilles. As the reservation’s lands were nibbled away piece by piece and offered to white developers, some Coquilles made their way back to their old homes, where they discovered that their traditional fishing and gathering places were now on private property. They joined remnant, mixed-blood families living around Coos Bay and up the Coquille drainage, descendants of Coquille women who had married white men in the 1850s and had not been transported to the reservation.

Fringetree, White Clump, Medicinal Uses for Liver and Gallbladder Disorders

By Liliana Usvat
Blog 281-365

White Clump Fringetree is clothed in stunning panicles of fragrant white flowers rising above the foliage in late spring. It has emerald green foliage throughout the season. The narrow leaves turn yellow in fall. 

White Clump Fringetree is a multi-stemmed deciduous tree with a more or less rounded form. Its relatively coarse texture can be used to stand it apart from other landscape plants with finer foliage.

This is a high maintenance tree that will require regular care and upkeep, and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season's flowers. It has no significant negative characteristics.

White Clump Fringetree is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Accent
• Mass Planting
• Hedges/Screening
• General Garden Use

Plant Characteristics:

White Clump Fringetree will grow to be about 18 feet tall at maturity, with a spread of 18 feet. It has a low canopy with a typical clearance of 2 feet from the ground, and is suitable for planting under power lines. It grows at a slow rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for 60 years or more.

This tree does best in full sun to partial shade. It is an amazingly adaptable plant, tolerating both dry conditions and even some standing water. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is highly tolerant of urban pollution and will even thrive in inner city environments.

This species is native to parts of North America.

The almost-odorless root bark is gathered, washed, and dried for medicinal use. It has all but eluded modern horticulturists in growing it on a commercial scale, either by cutting or grafting. Most plants seen in gardens are from seeds which require over two years to germinate, if at all.

Medicinal uses

The fringe tree was commonly used by the North American Indians and European settlers alike to treat inflammations of the eye, mouth ulcers and spongy gums. 

In modern herbalism it is considered to be one of the most reliable remedies for disorders of the liver and gall bladder. The dried root bark is alterative, aperient, cholagogue, diuretic, febrifuge and tonic. 

The roots of the fringe tree are dried and used to treat liver and gallbladder disease in traditional American folk medicine, often in combination with barberry and other herbs containing berberine. 

The root acts as a bitter,stimulating release of bile, which increases gastric secretion and improved appetite and digestion. 

American Indians made a root-bark tea to clean wounds and sores and associated inflammation and infections. Overdoses can cause vomiting, frontal headaches and a slow pulse.

 In addition to the conditions cited, homoeopathy practices also use fresh root bark to treat migraine, headache, and depressive symptoms 

 The root bark also appears to strengthen function in the pancreas and spleen whilst anecdotal evidence indicates that it may substantially reduce sugar levels in the urine. Fringe tree also stimulates the appetite and digestion and is an excellent remedy for chronic illness, especially where the liver has been affected.