Arthur Haines staghorn sumac

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:15]Hi, my name is Arthur Haines and today I'd like to share with you a freedom that I enjoy and that is freedom from the need to purchase medicine.

[00:00:24]And it's a freedom that I would like you also to be able to enjoy.

[00:00:27]Herbal medicine is a large topic and pursuits like this take a great deal of time and motivation to master even a small set of the skills that are needed.

[00:00:38]However, like any topic of this kind, it begins with one step forward and continues step by step as you learn new pieces of information.

[00:00:47]Said another way, as you learn more about each plant species, you develop a deeper relationship with it.

[00:00:55]Now, many people are aware that herbal medicine requires the use of products that are collected at some point during the year. Most people think that these have to be collected during the growing season when the plants are living. And in fact, that's not entirely true because woody plants, like the shrubs that you see behind me, actually do have living tissue above the ground during the winter season. So, even during the coldest part of the year, when the snow is very, very deep, we can still access herbal medicine if we know what parts of the plants to go after.

[00:01:33]As we look around on the early winter landscape here in Maine, we get the distinct impression that the trees and shrubs in the foreground, the deciduous species, are dead. And in fact, that's mostly true. The vast majority of the stems and branches are comprised of dead plant cells.

[00:01:51]However, underneath the outer bark is a thin layer of living inner bark that rests against the wood of the tree or shrub.

[00:02:00]And that bark is one of the first lines of defense these plants have against infection.

[00:02:06]Consequently, they're often loaded with pharmacologically active constituents that work as antiseptics and antimicrobials.

[00:02:15]And that is something that we as humans can take advantage of to protect our health as well.

[00:02:22]Today, we're going to look at Rhus hirta, which is the staghorn sumac.

[00:02:27]The Passamaquoddy natives have a wonderful name for this, which is zolanimus, which translates to new horns of the deer.

[00:02:36]Staghorn sumac is a little used plant in modern herbal medicine, but that's unfortunate because it is a very effective antimicrobial with activity against bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

[00:02:51]If we look to the traditional use by the native people of this continent, we see that it was used as an external wash for burns and wounds and blisters and those kinds of things. As well, the Maliseet and the Menominee natives used it as a cure for tuberculosis, which is a bacterial infection of the respiratory system.

[00:03:12]Though there appears to be very little research, whether that's clinical or laboratory, supporting the traditional use of this plant, a related species, and a very closely related species, smooth sumac or Rhus glabra, has been tested. And in fact, in one study that examined 100 species from North America for their antimicrobial activity, it was in fact the number one most effective plant against the range of pathogens that they tested, which includes Staphylococcus aureus, a really important bacterium because it has developed resistance to so many prescription medications.

[00:03:52]To extract the medicine from staghorn sumac, it's often easiest to remove a branch from the plant. That way, you can work on this with the edge tools that we'll be using and leave the remainder of the plant behind. Now, as an additional way to help make sure you've collected the correct plant, be sure to look at the smoothly cut wood on the inside. You'll notice at the very center is an orange round and then there will be several concentric circles of greenish-yellow or yellowish wood, depending on how old the branch is. And then finally, on the exterior, you'll come to the pale wood on the outside.

[00:04:31]It's really quite neat when you get this cut open.

[00:04:36]Remember that most of the branch that I'm holding here is dead. That includes the wood as well as the outer bark. So, I need to get at the inner bark to make medicine to fight infection. However, we run into a complication this time of year.

[00:04:52]The problem is the bark is very tightly adhered to the wood and we can't simply peel it away as we would be able to during the growing season. So, this time of year, we need a tool of some kind to help us remove that bark.

[00:05:08]Probably easiest, if you have one, to use a drawknife.

[00:05:13]And with the drawknife, we can simply brace the branch against our stomach and carve toward us. Now, what we want to do is to be sure we apply the correct amount of pressure so that we don't go deep into the wood because the wood is not as active from a medical perspective as the inner bark is. Here, I've dived in just a little too deep and I have some of the pale wood. Usually, a nice tight bend at the end will help me peel that wood away, as you can see here, and I may have to do this more than once so that I can get rid of those wood fragments.

[00:05:56]Because what I want is I want my medicine to be made out of, as much as possible, just the inner bark.

[00:06:03]Now, the outer bark is very thin and sometimes difficult to remove and I don't worry about getting every scrap of it, but when it's convenient and if it's separating for me, like it often will with this with this species, I'll pull that away so that I have just pieces of the inner bark.

[00:06:23]If you don't own a drawknife, that's okay.

[00:06:26]Any large fixed-blade knife will work.

[00:06:29]You can use it just like a drawknife.

[00:06:32]Here, we're dealing with a very thin bark, so we can even use a folding knife.

[00:06:38]And of course, real freedom means being able to use the tools that the landscape provides us. So, here I'm using a piece of Kineo rhyolite, which is a napped stone that was gathered in central Maine. And just like a drawknife, I can use a sharp edge to remove that bark without much more trouble than the drawknife. In fact, because it's not quite so sharp, I've actually removed a piece of bark with no pieces of wood on it. And I found that to be the case with other bark medicines that I've collected, that using the stone tool actually ends up saving me time because it's much less likely to dive deep into the wood.

[00:07:23]One of the things that makes plants so approachable as food and medicine is that they are sedentary. One of the reasons that they were referred to as the standing people by many Native American tribes.

[00:07:36]So, what we need to learn is the ecology of these plants so that we know where to find them.

[00:07:41]Staghorn sumac is a species of open areas. In other words, it doesn't tolerate shade from taller trees well.

[00:07:49]So, we typically find it along forest borders, along roadsides, and particularly in old fields that have been left to grow up a bit. In other words, they're feral. And we can also find this species along floodplains, open river beaches, and places where the forest is just beginning to reclaim that river beach and these early successional shrubs have moved in.

[00:08:15]One question you might have is what is it that you're going after in the inner bark? And in this case, we're actually going after a suite of compounds. Some of the known ones include gallic acid, methyl gallate, and 4-methoxygallic acid.

[00:08:31]These compounds belong to a group of phytochemicals called polyphenols. And what's important for you to know is that polyphenols as a group are highly water-soluble. That means that you can easily turn these into effective medicine at home by simply soaking them in water. Or, in this case, you would be simmering them them in water for a short period of time.

[00:08:54]Though you can use the fresh bark to make the medicine, in this case, it's probably more effective to use recently dried bark. By drying it, we get rid of the water that would dilute our medicine. As well, we shrink cells in drying and then we expand and rupture them again when they hydrate during the simmering process, so it helps to extract more of those compounds that are found within the cells.

[00:09:23]Once you've gathered the inner bark, you can store it, once it has been dried, in a closed container for as much as a a year and still retain its active medicinal qualities. If you gather it this time of year, simply lay it out on a tray and place it in the warmest part of your house or next to the heat source, whether that's a wood stove or some appliance that has forced hot air to help get it to a dried state where it will be stable.