Useful and Medicinal Trees of the Eastern Woodlands 4

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okay guys sassafras is not very easy to find this time of year most of the leaves have fallen turned you can barely make the shape of that one out a club shaped leaf these get eaten off and browse pretty heavy early in the fall by the deer and things like that but there are a couple small ones here there's another one beside it right over there but these younger trees are really the ones that have the good root bark on them if you can get them up because usually the younger the plant is the more powerful with this for medicine so this piece of root right here and this root bark is what we're actually looking for I could dug that up I snapped it off there's probably some more down in the ground but you can smell it just from breaking it off you can smell the sassafras root berry smell to that afternoon guys Dave Canterbury at the Pathfinder school back again with another video in our useful and medicinal tree series at Eastern woodlands today what we're going to talk about real quick is sassafras and sassafras is one of the trees that used to put basically in my toolbox as a useful medicinal tree really for only one main reason we'll get to that down at the bottom sassafras has been used for centuries by Native Americans as part of their remedy for fever is a very important component in their fever remedies along with inner bark of the sycamore tree or the heartwood of the Sycamore and cherry but it also has carcinogens in it so you have to be very careful of sassafras a lot of old-timers like to drink sassafras tea in the summertime sassafras tea is very cooling the routine thins your blood okay because it thins your blood it allows your blood to circulate matter it opens up the pores and let you sweat so you can take advantage of that in evaporative cooling and it has a cooling effect the sassafras is one of those herbs that actually understands what it needs to do to your body depending on what your body's going through and it's kind of hard to explain how but there's a lot of herbs out there that are very intuitive to what's going on inside your body when you take them and sassafras besides being a fever reducer used by Native Americans the root bark aids in digestion it's a very good tea to drink if you're having any type of issues from diarrhea all the way to constipation if there's something wrong with your intestinal tract something wrong with your digestive system that's not working out right not acting right sassafras tea can't balance that for you but it needs to be something that you take not on a full-time basis it needs to be very strictly administered basically okay I have a problem I'm going to take it for a couple days then I'm going to lay off because of the carcinogens that are involved and they're neurotoxins and sassafras the most important thing that I like about sassafras is its properties that are detoxifying to things that are on the surface of the skin and what I mean by that is when you get bites and stings that cause necrosis or eruptions things that books like Matthew wood calls putative putrid have skin damage okay like would be caused from a brown recluse bite that necrotic skin damage if you combine that with other plants like Mullen or plantain that have the same type of curative and antiseptic and drawing type properties you can use that as a poultice on that stuff and it will help it tremendously that's why I like sassafras so well so you've got a couple different things you can do with that sassafras from cooling yourself down in the summer to even thickening your blood a little bit if you're careful with it in the wintertime to keep you a little bit warmer to the properties of the chronic areas of the skin eruptions boils acne anything like that sassafras is good for the only thing I've just said you have to be careful of is how much I mean you take internally okay but sassafras is a very good useful tree of the Eastern woodlands and it's very common in Eastern woodlands which is another reason that I chose to use it here

okay now like I said with sassafras you know it does tend to thin your blood especially in the summertime if you take it or if you drink the tea made from the bark so if you already have thin blood or you have problems with thin blood you want to stay away from sassafras because it's not good for you what I've done is I just went out and collected a few small pieces of root stock here that I showed you earlier off those small plants and I couldn't find anything really big

it was obvious most of the trees are starting to lose their leaves now out here so I just grabbed these off of small trees that were on the ground that still had a couple leaves on them it's like identify them you're not going to miss identify this root once you pick it it smells just like root beer now you don't want to boil this stuff because if you boil it you're going to ruin it it takes all the good properties out of it if you boil it so cold teas cold infusions are better if you're going to drink the tea what I usually do with this stuff if I can find the small fresh roots like this that are off very small you know baby trees what I'll do is I'll either just cut it up in a couple chunks or tear it off by can and I'll just chew it and by chewing it I'm getting all of the essence of that outer bark and in my mouth swallowing the juice and then after I'm done chewing it up I'll just spin it out but I gets everything into my system it's very pleasant on the palate doesn't taste nasty at all very reminiscent of root beer now I'll just put these in my hammer sock and I'll have them for later on on the trail and I can do that throughout the day and hopefully that would help with any digestive problems I was having if I was you know stocked up or if I had diarrhea anything like that that would take care of it for me it would also cool me down the summer opening up my bloodstream opening my pores letting me swim a little more take advantage of that evaporative cooling in Eastern woodlands where the humidity is high and I'd be ready to rock and roll so with that said I'm Dave Canterbury from the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me for another video I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I'll be back with another video as soon as I can you