Bushcraft Trees: Eastern White Pine

Description

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In this video I show the Eastern White Pine tree, show how to identify it, and some uses.

Tags: Tree (Literature Subject),Pinus Strobus (Organism Classification),Pine (Organism Classification),Wood,camping,survival skills

Video Transcription

we're here in the land of eastern white pine latinum Pinus strobus let's take a look at some uses here's a great key identification feature for the eastern white pine the outstretched arms their windswept and you can tell wind direction that way the prominent wind direction comes from this way and that's why they're all swept that way makes total sense they're they're made famous by the group of seven painters and Tom Thompson in particular it's a great example of a young eastern white pine it's a very flexible wood soft the bark is edible the inner bark it's called the cambium layer so there's the outer bark or cambium layer and in the wood you can actually eat the kandy and layer it's not gonna taste good but in a pinch it's useful the white pine needles almost have a soft look to them here you can see what I mean white pine needles grow in groups of five here you can see what I mean there's a group of five another group of five so that's not one that's five each some Pines have two sometimes are short sometimes are long this one groups of five and long here's a great example of two different kinds of white pine bark younger and older this is a younger white pine obviously not as young as the one I just showed you the sapling but as it gets older it starts to get a little bit harder this one way older than that and gets scaly bark on it super hard this one is smooth and on examples of old pine like this you can see the bark is very furrowed and you can actually get your hand in there pull it off already take a knife and pry it out - sometimes it's hard to get with your hand but the bark has a bunch of uses as well you can take bark off of old trees to lay down on the ground so that you can build your firearm you can actually make a handhold for aberrant for a bow-drill here like a bearing block out of this and you can also carve votive it's very very soft you can make bobbers for fishing little spoons whatever just sitting by the fire my absolute favorite use for the white pine is fire you can go from nothing to fire we had a half an hour with no tools with just one tree I'm not talking about Eastern pine as a whole I'm talking one specific tree when I go camping I like to I'd like to bring cigars sometimes so that means I have a lighter with me maybe you're the same maybe you don't have any gear maybe you're just over I you need to make a fire or you just want to make a fire with just a lighter and one tree we're gonna get a fires on when starting you want to start with the absolute smallest twigs like I'm not I'm not joking don't leave any of them behind grab all of these and you're gonna need about a handful big handful of them to get this thing going this is the key to using no tools to get a fire a very very small prep so a base is important a good base is very important especially in this snow so that's what I'm doing now I'm just getting thicker pieces and breaking them to make a base now that I've created a good base on the snow I can start to gather my mid-size fuel I didn't want to do that before I got my base going because I don't want to carry this around as I'm doing it and I don't want to put my dry twigs on the wet ground so I'm just gonna rest them on the base until I'm done so just something I wanted to say I'm doing this without without gloves on and it's cold outside and your hands get real bitter just be careful if you're doing this this really it hurts sometimes when you break it if it breaks right in the middle where you're holding it it hurts a lot I've got all my kindling laid out now my smallest in my hand my next size up my next size up and my fuel over here on the snow the fuel really doesn't matter that it's on the snow because it's not small this is how I'm lighting them I just broke the smallest kindling up bundle it together and snapped it off so there's a lot of exposed area and with any luck this bundle will glow will burst into flames I'm just trying to get the wind to take it in the right spot so we're just basically trying to let this generate some heat and grow into a bigger flame I'm putting it in towards the wind

see it's starting to go tick and then just pile all your sticks on right away there's no need to pussyfoot around you need to get a fire going you you can see how quickly that fire grew and it you could actually just keep breaking twigs and putting on make it as high as your body if you want it it's a good way if you go if you get dunked in a lake or you just need a warm up it's very common to see the bark stripped off of the white pine at the top and that's from a porcupine porcupine really likes eating the inner layer the walls as well and a lot of the times they'll actually hang out in the same tree where they do that for a long time so a good chance that if you see a stripped layer of pine at the top that porcupine is still gonna be up there and if you've got a 22 on you that's a good survival meal if you're interested in seeing any more videos on trees and their uses let me know in the comments thanks for watching guys take care when snow falls into your tinder bundle pets good