Top 12 Medicinal Trees of the Southeast

[00:00:00]My name is Matthew Hunter with Legacy Wilderness Academy, and today I'm going to show you the top 12 medicinal trees of the southeastern US. In this video, you're going to discover that our southern forests are like a pharmacy that can provide free medicine to relieve many of the common ailments that plague mankind. You just have to know where to look. So, for this video, I started in a lab, which is really just our spare bedroom, where I began brainstorming a list of every medicinal tree I could possibly think of that grows in our region. As a foraging instructor, I already have a pretty big list of useful plants, but I also consulted some of my favorite books to make sure I didn't miss any. After that, to the drawing board. I wrote down every medicinal tree I could think of, including a few of our larger shrubs like elderberry and hawthorne. and I circled all of the ones I knew that I wanted to be on the list. Plants that have massive benefit to mankind that I just couldn't not cover. Then I had to make a few tough decisions. But once I weighed my different options, I ended up coming up with a list of what I think are the top 12 medicinal trees of the Southeast. So all that was left was to go out into the field and film them. So I geared up, kissed my wife goodbye, and off to the woods I went.

[00:01:13]So, I'm on the way to a local wildlife refuge to check out the first tree on my list, which is called Hawthorne. The reason I chose Hawthorne is because it's the premier heart tonic in western herbalism. It's been pretty well researched and it can improve heart health as well as lower high blood pressure. And because heart disease is the number one cause of death in America, I think Hawthorne has the serious potential to preserve and extend human life. Uh so um just pulled up here and I'm going to go down this little uh power line trail here and I'm going to show you a good location to uh actually harvest hawthorne because in this refuge um it's obviously protected for the most part as far as foraging goes, but harvesting wild fruit is actually allowed and it's the fruit of hawthorne that we're after. So while we're on the way to this tree, let's talk a little bit about hawthorns. There's a lot of different species of hawthorne in the United States and also in Western Europe. Generally speaking, they're all used the same way. We're going to look at two different species in this video.

[00:02:17]And as far as finding hawthorns, there's actually a best time to find them.

[00:02:21]There's two times of the year when they're they really stick out. The first is in the month of March when they produce copious amounts of white flowers. The main species we're going to be looking at is called parsley hawthorne. And on this one, if you walk up to the flowers, you'll notice that it has little pink anthers. So, those little uh parts of the flower that bears pollen is actually pink. The flowers look like they would smell wonderful.

[00:02:44]They actually kind of have a a musky, not so great smell. The second best time uh to find them is when they fruit, and depending on the species, it's usually going to be September or October.

[00:02:58]Although, we're going to look at a species that produces fruit around the month of May as well. And so our parsley hawthorne is sort of a late fruing species. It produces fruit in October.

[00:03:08]Some of the other ones locally produce around September. And uh it's the flowers and the fruit that's used medically, primarily the fruit. So uh I think we should be getting to this hawthorn pretty soon. Let's check it out. So let's look at identification of the parsley hawthorne. This species is known as cretagus marshali and it can be found widespread throughout the whole southeastern US. It's probably the most common species in my area. So, just like its name would indicate, its leaves look a lot like parsley. You can see that here. So, this is a technically a shrub, but maybe it's almost reaches the size of a small tree. It's not like a shrub in the in the sense that it's a bush, but botanically speaking, we call it a shrub because it doesn't reach uh the size of like a full forest tree. I've already shown you what the flowers look like. The fruit are bright red. Like I said, they're produced in the month of October. And on the top they have this little five-parted sort of claw-like structure. These are known as persistent seepil. And these are the same things that you will find on the bottom of an apple or the bottom of a pair because hawthorns are in the same family as apples and pears. The bark is very distinct on the parsley hawthorne. It is smooth and gray, but then that outer layer will start peeling off in like these plates. It'll actually come off in like whole like little chunks and then underneath it will reveal this burnt orange coloration. And so if you think you have parsley hawthorne, go and look at the trunk on the larger trunks. See if you can find that burnt orange.

[00:04:36]Sometimes they're actually kind of a brighter orange patches. And that's a great feature to confirm your identification. The last identification feature you want to keep in mind for hawthorns is that like their name suggests, they have thorns. To prepare hawthornne into a medicine, you can use either the flowers or the fruit. The fruit is probably the main part that's used in western herbalism. You can dry them out and boil them up into a tea.

[00:04:59]That's an absolutely great way to prepare the plant. You can also make a tincture or alcohol extract of the fruit by covering the fruit in alcohol, putting it in the blender to expose it all. You know, expose the surface area, let it sit for 4 to 6 weeks, and then strain it out, and you will have a concentrated extract of Hawthorne fruit.

[00:05:18]The next species of Hawthorne I want to show you is actually a famous delicacy here in the south. Although most southerners would be familiar with it, few people would know that it's actually a type of hawthorne. It's called Mayha.

[00:05:31]So, here in Louisiana, I don't know about the rest of the South, but here in Louisiana, Mayha is considered like the best jelly that mankind has ever yet to create. The way locals talk about it, it's like they're just itching every spring to get their hands on some mayh jelly. We actually harvested some from this refuge a couple years ago. So, there is a population of wild mayha trees here on the refuge. We'll have to travel to a different part of the refuge to get to it. But, I'm going to show you may its native wild habitat. Let's check it out. If you grew up with a tree in your yard, it's not going to be obvious that in their native habitat, they're actually a semiaquatic tree because they can be planted on dry ground outside of their native habitat. But, if you want to find them in the wild, you have to go down into a flood zone. So, I'm in a flood zone right now. Oh, this is an area that's dry currently, but seasonally will actually be flooded. And the way you know in the south that you're in a flood zone is when the pine trees start to disappear. And you see a um an overstory of hardwood trees. So, Willow Oak is the dominant hardwood in this area. There's also a lot of pimmen trees. I'm walking by a ton of little pimmen trees which like flood zones. Uh and so this is where you're going to be looking for wild trees. Traditionally, they were actually harvested from boats.

[00:06:49]So, you would pull your boat up to a mayhaw tree, which is underwater. Shake the tree, the fruit falls down onto the surface of the water where it floats, and then it's scooped up by nets. So, I'll go ahead and show you cuz that's how we harvested mayhos a couple years ago.

[00:07:04]>> Abby, >> you got it. You can do it.

[00:07:08]>> Eat this mayhawk first.

[00:07:10]>> Okay.

[00:07:13]>> Yeah. picking may with my dad.

[00:07:19]>> Okay. And just to show you what I mean, here is a bald cypress tree, which as all good southerners know is an aquatic tree. It grows directly in water. And then right here we have a pcimmen tree on the left and then intertwined with it is a little tree. And so unlike most Hawthorne species which produce fruit in the fall, Mayha, as you may have guessed by its name, produces fruit around the month of May. So, in my area, the last week of April, first month of May is when you want to look for the fruit.

[00:07:47]They're a lot larger than the parsley hawthorne we looked at. They're also more sour, which is why they make such good jelly. The leaves of mayha, uh, they can be uh unloed or they can have lobes. As you can see here, they sort of have a loed pattern on the back of the leaf. The thing you want to look for is these rusty colored hairs uh for identification. They also have white flowers. in the month of March. They're a lot larger than the parsley hawthorne.

[00:08:13]So, you can see what those look like here. All right. I'm really excited to show you this next tree. I had to drive around to the other side of the refuge because there's a nice little grove of them kind of all throughout this little area. This is actually the largest species of blueberry in the United States and probably in the world. It grows to the size of a small tree. Has a few different names. It's known as sparkleberry, farleberry, or winter huckleberry. So, here's one right here.

[00:08:41]And there's a there's a few more over there and all back in here. So, let's check it out. By the way, I'll quickly mention that if any of you guys happen to be in North Louisiana and you want to come out here into the field with me and look at edible and medicinal plants, I'm leaving a link in the description below this video where you can sign up to get notified whenever I'm teaching edible and medicinal plant walks. So, check that out if you happen to be local.

[00:09:03]Okay. Okay, so winter huckleberry can be a medium-sized shrub like you see here, but it can grow all the way up to the size of a small tree. So here is a trunk of winter huckleberry, and they even get bigger than this. The further south you go towards the Gulf Coast, typically the larger they will grow. And so this is not an evergreen shrub, but its leaves are sort of tough and leathery. Uh, and we would maybe say it's tardy deciduous because it does lose its leaves in the winter time, but they tend to kind of hold on longer than some of those uh more sort of delicate leaved deciduous trees. One of the features you want to look for on the larger shrubs is that it has this sort of brownish um almost I wouldn't say shaggy, but you can see that sort of rough textured bark, but then underneath where that starts to peel away, you'll notice that there is a distinct brick red color to some parts of the bark. little patches of smooth brick red color and that's what you want to look for. The flowers of winter huckleberry appear around the month of May and you can see they're in botney what we call an urn shape or almost kind of like a little bell shape here and they're white. Sometimes I think they have a little bit of pinkish in them as well. So you're looking for these in the month of May. That is when this shrub is the most visible. So it's the leaves and bark we're using medically from this tree. Primarily uh the bark if you can justify taking it. we will have to kill one of these shrubs to take the bark.

[00:10:27]So, keep that in mind. You only want to harvest this from an area where it's very abundant and where it's legal to do so. And this is one you would definitely want to consider growing. I think it would be a good replacement for crepe myrtle, which is, you know, a non-native that's kind of overplanted in my opinion. It sort of has a same uh growth pattern to the crepe myrtle. Doesn't have flowers all year long like those pretty crepe myrtle trees, but it does produce flowers in the month of May. And it also produces an edible fruit and it's called winter huckleberry because those fruit tend to come later uh than a lot of other blueberry species which usually fruit around, you know, April and into May. Winter huckleberry produces fruit around the month of October and it persists into winter. And so you can see what it looks like here.

[00:11:10]Uh they they do taste like blueberries.

[00:11:12]They are blueberries, but they're a little bit more dry and mealy than typical blueberries. So, you know, if you come expecting a blueberry, you're going to be a little bit disappointed.

[00:11:22]But if you just sort of take it for what it's worth, they're actually quite good.

[00:11:25]I like to uh put them in my oatmeal.

[00:11:28]Really delicious. And the bark of this tree is one of our top plants for working with high blood pressure. So, in that regard, it goes with the last plant we just looked at, hawthorne. And it's also a plant that can be used to regulate blood sugar. So the bark when taken over a prolonged period, you may not even notice results until you've been taking it for, you know, two or three weeks. Uh it can start to normalize and regulate blood sugar. So a very useful plant if you're not wanting to take those harsh uh sort of synthetic chemical uh drugs and maybe you just have a mild, you know, situation where you don't need a whole lot of those blood sugar drugs, but you you think you might be able to get off of them. This is a plant that can be used as a replacement. So even if you're not going out and harvesting, you know, a whole year supply, it is a good plant to know uh in the case of an emergency when um you know, maybe higher medical care may not be available. Pharmaceuticals may become unavailable. Uh this is one that you definitely want to keep sort of um in in your toolbox, so to speak, of plants to know in those sorts of situations. The next tree I want to talk about is one of my all-time favorite medicinal trees. It's called wild cherry. So, wild cherry is the premier cough medicine in western herbalism. It is one of the best plants for reducing the pain of a cough, especially if it's a real dry cough that uh you just can't seem to stop coughing. That cough reflex is just very irritated uh and you need something to kind of calm it down. I've given it to uh children who are recovering from whooping cough who you know they call it the 100 day cough where they just cough and cough and even after like the main illness is over the coughing just keeps them up at night and their life is miserable for the next month. This is a wonderful plant for that. But anytime someone has a cough um this is going to go into the formula that I give them whether it's a syrup or a tincture. So I'll show you how to identify uh the black cherry. This is wild black cherry or prunis serotina.

[00:13:29]You can see that the bark is really distinct. It has these uh sort of silvery horizontal lines on it that we call lenticles. And then the leaves are also very distinct because if you flip them over and look on the back along the base of the mid rib, right along the edge there, you can see that there are these rusty colored hairs and that is very distinct for this species. Also, if you look at the tip of the leaf, you'll notice how it kind of quickly comes to a point and we call that an accuminate tip. Now, there is another species of wild cherry that I like even more than this one, and it's the bark of both that I'm using. Uh, it's called the Carolina laurel cherry or prunis carolinana. Uh, and I actually have a whole video about wild cherries. I'll link below in the description. But that other species is really a deep south native Carolina laurel cherry. And almost every resource you'll ever find online is going to say that it's poisonous. You'll also see a lot of sort of fear-mongering around even just a regular wild cherry saying that it's poisonous. Uh, but the bark of both are used similarly, except the Carolina laurel cherry just packs a little bit more of a punch and neither of them are toxic when used properly as a medicine. So, I'll leave you to that.

[00:14:38]Make sure to check out that link in the description below on this one as well.

[00:14:42]Uh, it's just one of my all-time favorite medicinal trees. Well, today when I woke up to continue filming, I awoke to the sound of my year and a half-year-old son coughing. So, he's come down with a little cold and one of the main symptoms is coughing. And so, it's kind of good timing that I plan to cover the next two trees today, which pair very well with wild cherry, starting with the pine tree. So, before I left the house today, I gave him a few drops of laurel cherry tincture to help kind of calm that uh cough down, as well as a couple other things. And the pine is one that I'm going to be harvesting today and taking back home to give him.

[00:15:23]Pine trees are a wonderful medicine.

[00:15:27]Pine trees provide for us an excellent respiratory antiviral. It's an anti-infective for cold and flu for the respiratory tract. So, pine needles and bark can reduce inflammation in the lungs that can calm down the cough reflex. They also act as an expectctorant to help expel that sticky fleg out of the lungs. So, the part that I like to harvest is in the springtime whenever um the tree is putting out this new growth on the branches. If you pick those off, you'll notice that they're full of sap. And that sap is that anti-infective, you know, medicinal um part of the plant. But really, the the bark, the needles, even if you just get them at this stage, they're still going to be just fine. So today I'm going to go ahead and harvest some of this some of these pine needles, a little bit of pine bark, and I'll take those home to give to my son, and I'll also be giving him some of the next tree. Going along with wild cherry and pine, the third tree for that triple threat knockout punch for colds and coughs is going to be the infamous sweet gum tree. Uh so sweet gum, of course, is a hated tree in the south. Pretty much considered invasive, but of course it's not actually invasive. It's a native tree and and one of the host plants for Luna moth caterpillars. Kind of interesting.

[00:16:43]So, sweet gum is a classic respiratory antiviral for cold and flu and southern folk medicine. It was also used historically for whooping cough. And when it comes to medicinal plants, we are often concerned with what is the strongest part of the plant. Where are those medicinal constituents most concentrated? Is it the leaves? Is it the bark? Is it the root bark? Well, when it comes to sweet gum, there are different opinions. The herbalist Daryl Patton from North Alabama prefers to use the green gumballs, which can be harvested. They're usually kind of out of reach and hard to get to. But after a summer storm blows through, the brittle branches of sweet gum will fall to the ground and you can pick those green gumballs, chop them up, and tincture them in 190 proof alcohol or the strongest alcohol you have. The herbalist Phyllis Light, who I'm currently studying under, actually says that the root bark is her favorite um part. She considers that part the strongest. I don't think anyone would really argue that historically speaking, the sap has always been considered the strongest. The sap of sweet gum has this wonderful perfumelike smell. The problem with the sap is um not that, you know, it is the strongest. I think I don't think anyone would argue, but the problem is that it's hard to harvest large amounts of the sap. So, if you go up to a uh you know, a relatively mature sweet gum tree, scrape that bark off. Uh come back in a couple weeks, especially if it's like late spring, early summer when the sap's kind of moving. Uh come back in a couple weeks, you can see that sap dripping out. It has this just the most wonderful smell. Scrape that off and that can be added to a tincture because that sticky sap um really dissolves best in alcohol and that can kind of give that tincture superpowers.

[00:18:27]But it's hard unless you really had a lot of trees and wanted to and were really u you know set out to do it. It would be hard to harvest enough sap to really use that alone as a medicine. But the sap of course would be considered the strongest historically speaking. So uh really any part of this tree can be used, but today I'm going to be harvesting some of the roots and taking it back to my son to combine with wild cherry and pine for his cough.

[00:18:58]I am super excited to show you this next tree. This is an elderberry tree covered in big clusters of unripe fruit. In just one or two weeks, these berries are going to be ripening and will provide for us a wonderful immune system stimulant and respiratory antiviral for cold and flu. I'll show you what this tree looked like just a few weeks ago when it was covered in these massive clusters of little white flowers. The elderberry tree, which is really more of a large shrub, has so many different medicinal uses. It's a pharmacy or a medicine chest all to itself. And so the berries of this plant have become famous in recent decades for their benefits as an antiviral. This is a plant that can not only stimulate the immune system, but directly inhibits viral replication.

[00:19:45]and it can kill respiratory viruses and stop them in their tracks, especially when taken at the very earliest onset of a cold. A lot of our herbs are going to work best for our respiratory antivirals if we take them as early as possible.

[00:19:59]It's it's a lot harder to turn around a full-blown flu that's, you know, multiple days in than it is when you first get that tickle in the back of your throat. And this is one that has a lot of scientific evidence um validating its use for this purpose. Now, the flowers are another herb that I gave my son this morning before I left the house. The flowers also have are considered to have antiviral properties and historically we actually see the flowers being a much more important part of the plant than the berries which have only um relatively recently come into sort of the spotlight as being like the most important part of the plant.

[00:20:34]Historically, it was the flowers. The flowers are an excellent anti-inflammatory for the eyes as well as the sinuses. I was experimenting just the other day with using elderflower tea on the eyes as an eye wash. And so I won't go into how to do that, but I applied it to my eyes and in about 15 minutes my sinuses uh were just like as clear as they've ever been. So actually applying it to the eyes got into my sinuses and reduced inflammation in the sinuses. But if you take it as a tea or a tincture, it can reduce what we call respiratory Qatar, which is just an old way of saying that mucus that's all stuck. Maybe if you have allergies or if you have a cold where one of the main symptoms is that your sinuses are all stuffed up. Elder flowers are wonderful for that. Like I said, they can reduce inflammation on the eyes as well. They can be used for viral conjunctivitis.

[00:21:24]The flowers can um and then the leaves and the bark also have some use as well.

[00:21:30]uh they were used internally historically, although in the modern day you hear all this stuff about them being poisonous and deadly and blah blah blah blah blah. Um but most herbalists uh don't really necessarily use the leaves and the bark internally often, although some people do. So I won't talk so much about that as much as an external use.

[00:21:50]So the bark and the leaves are a wonderful anti-inflammatory uh for things like uh bruises and for soft tissue injuries. So, you're thinking strains, sprains, um even a broken bone uh to to aid and speed up the healing uh for a broken bone. Of course, most of the time, you know, you put a broken bone in a cast, so there's no way to really apply it. Uh but, you know, if you were, you know, sort of um able to access that area, it can help reduce inflammation in that area. So, uh it is a wonderful shrub all around. And I'm going to be using elder flowers today in the formula that I give my son.

[00:22:25]So, um we'll have to check that out. So for identification, elderberry is best identified in the month of May and June.

[00:22:32]It starts flowering in my area almost exactly on May 14th and will continue flowering uh fading away as we move on throughout the month of June. And really by July 1st, almost all of the flowers are finished. From there, uh the fruit are are soon to ripen. And so if we're looking at the flowers closely, we'll notice that whenever you pull those petals off, they come off in like little donuts. So all of the five petals are connected. And so you should be able to see that little hole uh you know in the middle of the flower that you've kind of pulled off forming a little donut there.

[00:23:06]As the berries ripen, the um the stems uh the fruit stems will turn a deep purple red color. The leaves of elderberry are penately compound. You can see what they look like here. And then the bark has these uh sort of like the cherry bark we looked at but a little bit different. It has these little dots all over it that we call lenttoils. So that's a distinct feature of elderberry. It also grows in very moist areas. So you're going to see it growing in um sort of sunny open but moist areas. And then lastly, if you take a little branch of elderberry and break it open, you'll notice that it has a styrofoam like pith. So all of those features together are pretty easily recognized. But like I said, the best time to actually locate it is in the month of May, late May, and throughout most of the month of June. Okay, so I'm going to make a quick herbal cough syrup using a couple of the trees we just looked at. So, here I have some sweet gum root bark, and I was actually amazed at how much resin you could actually see in this bark. I've never used the root bark before, but I doubt if after this video I'll ever use any part except for the sap and the root bark. And so, I'm going to go ahead and put the root bark in. I have a couple quarts of water here. And in typical backwoods herbal herbalist fashion, I'm not measuring any of the other ingredients. So, we're just going to throw it in and make a really strong decoction. Next, I have some pine bark. So, we'll go ahead and throw that pine bark in. Uh, we have some pine needles. Now, pine needles do have vitamin C, but vitamin C is destroyed by heat. So, um, we're really looking for the resin here in this decoction more than the vitamin C. So, here are the the young branches of pine. Very strong smelling. Uh, and then we have a couple of plants we didn't look at. I have a video on this one. This is called puricy root and it is like a go-to herb for the lungs and u sort of managing fluid balance in the lungs. We'll go ahead and throw a little bit of that in. And then this is called mountain mint, but I'm going to wait and throw it in while it's hot and then cover it with a lid. That's going to give our syrup a nice pepperminty flavor and also it lends um a little bit of mild congestion relief temporarily when you get that peppermint oil kind of coating your sinuses, but mostly it's for flavor. So, I'm going to put this on to simmer until it reduces by about half. Then, I'm going to add in those mountain mint leaves. Let those steep for about 15 minutes and then I'll strain it. So, I want this to be super strong. Somehow I got the measurement wrong. You can see right there I said it was two quarts. It looks like it's just over a quart. So, we'll go ahead and let this reduce by half. Okay. So, you can see all of that pine and sweet gum resin that has floated to the surface of the water. I've never made an herbal syrup with this much resin in it. So, hopefully it all dissolves into the final product. We'll see. But for now, I'm going to go ahead and add this mountain mint. And I will put the lid on and let it steep for about 15 minutes.

[00:25:58]Next, I'll go ahead and strain out the tea I just made.

[00:26:02]So, for my herbal syrup, I'm going to do 50% sugar and then the other half is going to be uh this decoction. So, I can already hear the comments about sugar and why don't you use honey and all this and that, but um you know, you can comment and judge me if you want.

[00:26:19]All right, so I'm going to give this guy about 2 teaspoon of this syrup. And to that, I'm gonna add about eight drops of laurel cherry tincture and about eight drops of elderflower tincture.

[00:26:34]You all right, little buddy? There we go. All right.

[00:26:38]Here you go.

[00:26:41]Is that yummy? Huh?

[00:26:45]>> More.

[00:26:46]>> Can you say Yeah.

[00:26:48]>> Yeah.

[00:26:48]>> It's good. Can you say it's good?

[00:26:51]>> Yeah. The next plant we'll look at is one that I trust most of you are familiar with. It's oftentimes just known as cedar in the south or red cedar. Scientifically, we would say that it's a species of juniper and it's known scientifically as juniperous Virginiaiana. And so this is a common and widespread plant in the eastern US.

[00:27:11]It becomes even more dominant as you go uh west into central Texas and Oklahoma where it becomes a lot more dry than you know the eastern red cedar is like a dominant uh shrub or tree everywhere you go. This is a very important medicinal plant. It has some uh some serious medicinal power to it. So much that you really don't want to take it for um prolonged periods more than like 5 days or uh 7 days. So this is a plant that's the berries are the main part that's used. And you can find the berries pretty much almost any time uh of the year in from the late spring all the way into the fall. But they're usually going to start dropping uh in large numbers in the fall. And you want to make sure that they are fully ripe before you use them.

[00:27:52]So they kind of look blue all the time, but that's because they have this like white coating on the outside. So if you rub that off, um sometimes they'll be green underneath. That means they're unripe. But you you want to wait till you rub that powder off and then they look blue on the outside and that's when you know that they're ripe. And so the two main things that I know to use this for, not to say that there's not more things that it can be used for, but the two main things are urinary tract infections and pancreatitis.

[00:28:18]So this is a powerful plant for working with any type of infection of the urinary tract. We do want to keep in mind obviously that a urinary tract can be something very serious that you may not want to treat from home. So you do want to keep that in mind uh knowing you know when to uh go to the emergency room and when to work with something from home. The same thing very much goes for pancreatitis. It can obviously be a red flag illness especially if there's you know some serious uh searing pain and fever especially that's a sign that you definitely want to go to the ER and not try to you know work with that from home. But what I learned from one of my herbal instructors, Phyllis Light, is that juniper berries are like the top remedy for pancreatitis. So, if you know you have pancreatitis and you know that it's not a severe case and you want to try to relieve some of that pain from home, what she recommends is taking three uh drops of a juniper berry tincture and then you wait 15 minutes and see if the pain's gone down. If it hasn't gone down in 15 minutes, you take three more drops and so on. Uh to so you can get your uh you know, you titrate is what we call that where we kind of figure out uh how much you need to get the job done. And so those are the two main uses of eastern red cedar. To harvest the berries, you want to put a tarp underneath one of the branches that's full of berries and then just gently tap it. and in the right um month, usually in the fall, like I said, they'll just all fall right off onto the tarp and then they can be tinctured or made into a tea from there. The next tree we'll look at is the only non-native tree on our list, but it's such a powerful medicine that I absolutely have to cover it. It's called the mimosa tree. So, mimosa is identified by its bright pink pompom like flowers which appear around the month of May, throughout the month of June, and into July in my area. its flowering season coincides with elder flowers. So if you see elder flowers uh blooming and you'll probably see mimosa blooming around the same time. So again, this is an invasive tree. I don't recommend that people plant it despite its beauty. But I absolutely recommend that people harvest it and harvest a lot of it and kill it if you can because it does, you know, crowd out native species. So this is a plant that is a anti-depressant and mood booster and a very powerful one at that. This is an extremely effective and powerful herb and so I like to use the uh dried plant because I feel like it just sort of tones down its uh power a little bit.

[00:30:48]The flowers and the bark are both used.

[00:30:50]I like to make a tea with this plant when possible, but a tincture of the dried flowers or dried bark is also a good way to prepare it as well. And so this is a plant that's so powerful it may have some interactions with um pharmaceuticals related to the brain or nervous system. And it's one that if you have a mood disorder, you may want to be careful taking too much of this plant. I like to really balance it out with some of those other nervous system herbs that are a little bit more on the relaxing side. Things like sweet bay magnolia or vervane is good to sort of combine this in a formula to kind of balance out its mood boosting effects. I call it Chinese happy bark. And the the Chinese name, I I forget what it's called off the top of my head, but it sort of translates to something along the lines of like collective happiness bark or or something along that nature. What I say about this tree, its effects, the way I like to explain them is if you're kind of, you know, bummed out and you're kind of slumped like this, this is kind of your mood. It just kind of lifts you up by the collar and just puts some uh some, you know, mood into some good uh joy, it kind of feels like, so to speak.

[00:31:53]Uh, and so this plant, as identified by its bipanately compound leaves, you can see what they look like here. Sort of a fern-like appearance. And then those pink flowers I showed you, will turn into a bean pods. It is in the bean family. And like I said, it's the flowers and bark of this plant that are used. I actually have a couple videos um demonstrating how to use this plant as a medicine. So, it's a wonderful medicine that I think everyone should know. Just be a little bit careful with it because it is a very powerful plant. We don't want to uh you know underestimate it just because it's a plant. We want to use safety when working with this plant.

[00:32:27]Moving on from mimosa, the next tree we're going to look at combines really well with mimosa for its ability to enhance the mood and relieve stress.

[00:32:35]It's called Sweet Bay Magnolia. So there are about nine species of magnolia in the United States, give or take. Sweet bay historically was sort of given the most attention as a medicine, but the other magnolia do share some of its properties as well. So, the Sweet Bay magnolia can be identified by its uh leaves which on the back are a bright white color. Also, if you crush and smell the leaves of Sweet Bay, you're going to notice um almost a sort of a tea tree or essential oil type smell to them. So, they grow in these sort of low down moist areas. They oftentimes grow in clumps, so there's multiple trunks and they have smooth gray bark. They have um magnolia flowers just like the southern magnolia you're all familiar with, but they're a little bit smaller.

[00:33:20]They appear around the month of June.

[00:33:22]And then they form those little seed cones that other magnolia form as well.

[00:33:27]And so a pretty easy identification just based on those leaves, the smell, and the habitat. So sweet bay is used for a number of different things. The primary thing I use it for is to relieve stress and improve the mood. The Chinese magnolia, magnolia efficient, uh has been widely studied uh for its effects on the brain and the nervous system. And so it's a wonderful plant. It's very effective. Uh it can induce a mild headache if you take too much. So I like to tincture the bark. Fresh is one way that I prepare it. And I take about 30 drops per dose. Um if I go up to about 60 drops, it it definitely works, but I may get a mild sort of nagging headache throughout the day. So I like to do you know anywhere from 15 to 30 drops is quite effective especially when combined with some of those other plants for relieving stress and burnout and improving the mood. Again vervane mimosa combines really well. Now another use for magnolia uh is as an anti-inflammatory for joint pain. So that's one of its main uses historically is it was used uh for rheumatism and arthritis. It has a number of other uses as well. It it's also great for the gastrointestinal tract. It can relieve inflammation according to philisite.

[00:34:40]It's also been used for disyspsia to help sort of relieve some of that pain and cramping um associated with you know gastrointestinal distress and a number of other things as well as far as using other magnolia. So I'll show you the range map of where sweet bay grows. It's very much a sort of deep south tree. The southern magnolia has a similar range and it has not been given as much attention in the herbal medicine literature, but I highly suspect based on the smell and taste of the bark, it has a real spicy kind of taste just like the sweet bay that it can be used as well. Now, the leaves and the bark of sweet bay can be used. I should mention the bark is a little bit stronger, but the leaves absolutely have medicinal activity. With the southern magnolia, on the other hand, I don't get that same medicinal smell as strongly from the leaves, but I do from the bark. So, I highly suspect that the southern magnolia bark can be used. It is safe to use for sure, but as far as are you going to get that same medicinal uh punch. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'm in the process of experimenting. Other magnolia can be used as well. I'll show you another species of magnolia that kind of grows outside of my area, but it is common throughout the Appalachians.

[00:35:48]And uh other magnolia have for sure been used for reducing pain and inflammation in the joints. I don't know how much the nervous system benefits uh translate to other magnolia species. I suspect that they uh they do that that other magnolia can relieve stress and and burn out and improve the mood. But the main one I've ever worked with is the sweet bay and it's the main one in my area that grows in the wild. Uh so I can't speak on that for sure, but they're all safe to use.

[00:36:16]All magnolia are safe to use. So, I definitely recommend experimenting with your local species, of course, as long as it's common enough to justify harvesting some of the bark. Moving on from magnolia, the next tree we're going to look at is another remedy for arthritis pain. It's known as toothache tree or prickly ash. So scientifically, this southern species we're looking at is known as zanthsylm clava hercuis. But it also has representatives both in the Midwest, zanthsylm Americanum, I believe is the species name, and then one or two species in the drier parts of Texas. All the different species of zanthsyllem can be used similarly and have similar properties. So in our house, this plant is known as tickle tongue because it has a unique uh numbing or tingling sensation in the mouth, which is why it was used for toothach. So, it's similar to um echynasia. If you've ever taken echynasia, like a tincture of it in the mouth, and it has that sort of almost tingling sort of sensation. This plant is very similar. It's almost like licking a 9volt battery is the feeling you get when you take some of this tincture. It's actually in the citrus family. So, this is this genus is like the northernmost representative in the citrus family in the United States. So, kind of interesting. It's identified by its leaves, which are penately compound.

[00:37:32]They are covered in these reddish thorns all over the leaves. They have a sort of a sort of a citrusy kind of smell is definitely very unique. And even just a tiny little piece of the leaf or especially of the bark just chewed in the mouth and within one or two minutes you're going to start noticing a very strong sort of numbing numbing a tingling sensations. The thorns on this tree take on a very unique appearance.

[00:37:57]You can see that on the younger trunk it does have some thorns on it, but as the tree gets larger, those thorns get massive and they look to me like plates on a stegosaurus. So, it's a really unique appearance and a good way to sort of remember it. When you see it, you'll immediately know what it is. Look for this tree growing in drier areas. I usually see it um oftent times growing alongside eastern red cedar or uh juniper, which we've already looked at.

[00:38:23]And you'll see it almost always growing along the edges of fences. I think that birds perch on uh barbwire fences uh deposit the seeds and so it's almost always growing in dry areas next to eastern red cedar or juniper along a fence. So that's a really uh a common place to find this tree. Like I said, this plant is used for arthritis pain.

[00:38:44]It has a number of other uses as well.

[00:38:46]It can stimulate uh circulation at least temporarily. It can help increase saliva production in the mouth. You put a couple drops in your mouth if you have a a real dry mouth. uh as you know this can be a problem uh for some people especially as you get a little bit older that can tend to to be an issue. But the main thing that I have I've learned to use it for is for arthritis pain. So it combines really well with something like magnolia uh as an anti-inflammatory sort of a systemic anti-inflammatory for the joints. The next tree we'll look at is a classic herbal remedy for fungal infections and internal parasites. It's called black walnut. So, black walnut is identified by its penately compound leaves. You can see that being a relative of hickory, they look very similar to hickory leaves, except they have more leaflets than most hickory species. You'll also notice that the terminal leaflets are the ones closest to the tip are greatly reduced in size compared to the rest of the leaflets along the central axis here. Another way to identify black walnut. I'm sure you're all familiar with what walnuts look like, but when they're produced on the tree, they actually have this fleshy green husk around them that may not be as recognizable to most people. So, this uh green husk makes it look like um this ball a little bit larger than the size of a golf ball. Now, these will fall to the ground, and when they fall to the ground, if you want to harvest the actual nut inside, you'll need like a stomper. So, it's a kind of a large stick with a flat bottom where you can pound off those husks. And then you want to harvest with gloves because it's uh those husks really stain the skin and that is the primary part of this tree that's used as a medicine. The green husk before uh they start to turn brown and rot. The leaves however can also be used. And I should mention that the leaves have a wonderful sort of spicy, some people say kind of citrusy smell.

[00:40:38]These ones um have like a a real almost a sweet smell. Another really interesting feature of black walnut is if you break open one of the twigs, there's this really unique pattern in the pith. So on the inside of the twigs, there's these horizontal lines with spaces between them. A very interesting and unique feature of black walnut if it doesn't have those characteristic uh uh husks on them. So I'll show you a picture of what those husks look like. I don't have a great picture. This tree is not doing too well. It's it's looking like it's kind of dying. So, I don't even see um walnuts. Um oh, actually, here we go. I do see a walnut. Okay, I looked and looked uh to look for these because to confirm your identification of black walnut, you'll usually see walnuts underneath a tree. So, funny because I looked all around before I started filming and then I just happened to look down and uh there it is. So, there is a a walnut. That's a great confirmation for identification. And so as far as uses go, this is a plant that, like I said, it can be used internally for um many different types of internal parasites. It's also used for fungal infections externally such as ringworm.

[00:41:43]It is one that can be used for uh issues of the mouth such as cankeraurs or thrush. Works really well for that. And then the herbalist Sam Kaufman recommends using black walnut for chronic sinus infections, which oftentimes have a a fungal component. He says if you're noticing that the the sinus infection keeps recurring over and over and over maybe you need to add a little bit of antifungal action. So in a combination of plants such as bourberine containing plants golden seal, barberry, organ grapefruit as well as some of those uh strong uh herbal antibacterials such as um horse mint or bomb. Those three herbs you know horsement, bourberine containing plant and then either the leaves or the holes of black walnut in a sinus spray. an excellent and effective remedy for chronic recurring sinusitis.

[00:42:34]Last but not least, my favorite tree of all time, the sassifrass tree.

[00:42:38]Sassifrass has a number of important edible and medicinal uses. If you've ever made gumbo with felt felt is actually just ground up sassifrass leaves. The roots of sassifras also have a strong root beer flavor. I have a whole video showing how to make natural carbonated root beer from the sassifrass tree. So, medically, sassifrass root is the main part that's used. The leaves don't have that same root beer flavor.

[00:43:04]They do have some use, but the root is the primary part used. Historically, it was used as a spring tonic, a plant that could sort of uh get your body back on track after a long winter of eating, you know, preserved food and dried foods.

[00:43:19]This is one that thins the blood and can actually make you just feel better. It is a powerful blood thinner. And that action of thinning the blood in my opinion just you can feel it. You can feel it in your joints and your body.

[00:43:31]And so the modern term we would probably use for this is an alterative a plant that helps sort of facilitate metabolic processes and waste removal in the body.

[00:43:43]U as as a metabolic tonic. Sassifrass really supports specifically the liver.

[00:43:48]It is a plant that has an affinity for supporting the liver despite, you know, information online you may have read about it actually being toxic to the liver. Sassifrass is a medicinal plant for the liver. And it's it's a wonderful liver tonic. It's a plant that I think in the modern day, one of the main ways I would probably use it is if someone is wanting to kind of get their health back on track, they want to start exercising, they want to start eating healthy.

[00:44:12]Sassifrass would be a good, in my opinion, sort of jump start to help the body over those first two or three weeks, getting back into those routines and helping the body to start those those processes of waste elimination, supporting the liver, kind of getting your whole body sort of back on track. I think that's a really good use for sassifrass. It's also an antiviral. It's a great respiratory antiviral. If you take a tincture of sassifrass root, you can definitely feel um an action on the lungs almost like a an antiseptic sort of action on the lungs in my opinion is the feeling that I get from sassifrass.

[00:44:45]It's also an antiviral according to the herbalist Daryl Patton for uh viruses in the herpes simplex family. This would include chickenpox and cold sores as well as shingles um internally and I believe externally as well is uh how that would be used. Um, and so sassifrass really the way I use it in my family the most is as a sort of a general tonic. I like to take it before I exercise because it has a rapid sort of blood thinning effect and also has what we call a diaphoretic effect. It can help you um induce a sweat and so I'll take it before exercise out in the heat. That blood thinning action sort of helps cool you off a little bit, induces a sweat, kind of gets those metabolic processes and eliminating waste from your body, I think. And then we use it as a tea. You add some sugar to it, tastes like a root beer flavored tea.

[00:45:35]Absolutely wonderful. And as as well as making root beer from it. And so I like to give it to my friends. What I tell my friends is that if I've given you sassifras ruby or sassifrass tea, you know you're one of my best friends because it's such a valuable plant and it takes a lot of work to dig them up that I I don't bust it out unless you're a really close friend. Now there is a problem with sassifrass and harvesting sassifrass and that is that there is a blight affecting sassifrass currently.

[00:46:01]Back, I believe it was in 2004, a a beetle was introduced um on the Atlantic coast from Asia called the red bay ambrosia beetle. This beetle holds a little fungus in its mouth and it bores into trees in the bay family including trees like spice bush, sassifrass as well as our wild bay trees and it has absolutely decimated populations of wild bay. Uh sassifrass is pretty aggressive.

[00:46:26]Um it aggressively spreads by the roots.

[00:46:28]So, it has decimated the sassifrass, but uh whenever a sassifrass tree is killed, it's able to send up a lot of runners.

[00:46:34]So, here in the southeast where I am, you usually don't see even sassifrass trees this big like the one I've I've shown. Oftent times they're only 6 to 8t tall and they're oftent times in colonies. Whereas, if you go outside of sort of my area, even as far as southeast Oklahoma, I've seen large sassifrass trees that are, you know, full forest trees, fullsize trees. Uh but here in the southeast where I am in in kind of the lower south, they're much more of a shrub. So keep that in mind.

[00:47:03]These plants do uh do quite well from root propagation. And so they can be dug up in the late fall after the leaves have fallen off and you know you can look up videos on root propagation, but they do quite well if you give give them some patience and take some time. You can get one sassifr tree and turn it into like five or six sassifr trees and propagate it that way. Well, before I say goodbye, I have a question for you.

[00:47:27]Is there a tree that you would have added to this top 12 list that I didn't add? And if so, which tree would you take out of the ones that I covered to fit your tree in? Comment below. I'm interested to see what you guys say. So, thank you so much for watching, and if you enjoyed this video, you may enjoy my video on 62 edible and medicinal plants of the Southeast, which is popping up on the screen right now. Until next time, have a great day.