Abies grandis, Fir Tree Medicine

Abies grandis, Grand Fir, Pinacea family

Abies grandis, Grand Fir

Fir tree Pinacea, pine family medicine. 
        
    In a face to face community herbalism you want to go directly to widely available plants. You don't need elaborate conspiracy theories to know an overt restructuring process of erasure is rapidly unfolding. All kinds of unimaginable scenarios are unfolding that make the simple act of being together with your kind publicly some kind of treasonous act. More than ever before it's vital to gather face to face IRL to learn these accessible tree medicine plants. Plants you can meet without a filter, face to face in small groups of friends without dogma, or baggage. Albies grandis, a fir pine family tree is an excellent starting point. You can find stands of fir from Arizona to British Columbia, from Maine to California. It's a tree you'll be instantly familiar with as soon as you crush the needle leafs or smell the sap in the resinous bumps and blisters, and smell the citrus pine aroma. 

Underside dual white stomata

      There's a good chance you've already embraced this tree in the form of wreaths hung on your door, or had it in your house as Christmas tree. In a sense you have worshipped this tree, you or your children opened presents underneath. The citrus piney scent went through the house. While making love to your wife, wrapping presents, it was there watching you. Informing you of our ancestral resilient bio-spirit for hundreds of generations in the darkest of winter. Fir is a circumborreal northern tree of Europe, Asia and North America. It's scent and medicinal authenticity's in our DNA of westernkind. It speaks to our well being now as it spoke to our fathers and mothers, to our noble good people. It is wanting to speak to you now just as it spoke to them before, keeping them alive during dark winters, with vitamin C, and alterative healing sap. It's both magic and mundane. All of the northern westernkind made a ritual of bringing this tree into their homes. If you are reading my words, know your kin used this tree. Know it. Feel it. Believe it. Become it. Whether pagan or Christian it's part of our tribal identity. Christians unbeknownst to themselves worshipped and prayed to this tree yearly at winter solstice. Even today atheists, Christians, agnostics, pagans do the same and bring the Wild Herb Ways into their life via this tree at solstice time. You see our old ways have been replaced and rewritten many times. Even bringing a plastic, fake machine made tree like form into our homes at solstice approximates and acknowledges these tribal suppressed memories still alive in the archetypes of the unconscious. We have been and forever will be a northern tree people. 

Top side leaf glossy green 

     Abies grandis is a tall evergreen conifer, with a symmetric conical shape, aromatic flat leaf needles, grey furrowed bark with resin bumps or sap filled blisters. The name Abies is of uncertain origins, perhaps a transliteration of the Greek 'pithys'. Pithys was a woman loved by both Panas and Vorias, the north wind. Vorias made too much noise, keeping her restless and on edge. So she went with Panas. Vorias the northern wind was jealous and angry and in a lovers rage, blew her over a cliff. Panas found her in the valley below and transformed her beautiful lifeless body into a fir tree. In her sadness for losing her human life and her longing for her lover Panas, she cries whenever the Vorias Northern wind blows. Her tears are the medicinal clear resinous sap from the sacred fir tree. The word 'fir' from the old Danish 'fyr', and old english 'firgen' or mountain forest, and fairgunni, gothic, originally refers to oak. During the three thousand year period 3400 BC to 400 BC, conifers, firs and birches displaced oaks in westernkinds northern european forests during a climatic shift., not different than climate shift today. A climactic shift that speaks to many of westernkind to move further north and touch base with our northern roots. "Hence it is no surprise, that in the early history of our germanic languages, fir referred to oak forests and shifts to reflect the transition to fir conifer forests." (Thomas V. Gamkrelidze; Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Europeans. 1994)

    It's range is from British Columbia on the west side of the cascades south to north California with a sub-species Abies grandis idahoensis in Idaho, Montana and far eastern Washington. Identitfy Abies grandis by the familiar conical Christmas tree shape, the grey bark with bumps blisters, and the flat needles rounded at the edge bright shiny green on the top side, grey dull green with two distinct whitish bands of stomata underside. 

      One tendency to avoid in western herbalism is the focus on the flashy, talked written about then talked written about some more, exotic, rare, endangered plants rather than the common, widely available, endemic, easily obtained plant medicines. Whether yarrow, dandelion, fir and pinacea tree medicine, balsam root, canadian flea bane- so many easily sustainable harvest wild plants are there for you and your families, don't overlook them. Abies grandis, grand fir, is one such tree medicine. Besides the medicinal constituents, it has a cultural aspect, it describes in intimate terms where and how you are and who your heroic ancestors are. It's a plant deeply present in our lineage. Our bio-spirit is called and is calling you to these old ways. In many ways your well being is my well being. 

The clear sap can be gathered with spoon

clear sap gathered by pressing

grey bark has blisters filled with clear medicinal sap

      Abies grandis is a potent sustainable abundant tree medicine. The needles and other fir and pine needles were long used as a winter tea with vitamin C that sustained people in the north. A quick tea is a good way for families and friends to meet this tree all. Take one cup of the new growth needles, a handful of Nootka bush rose petals or hips, some aralia nudicaulis root, asarum caudatum leaf or root, juniper berries or herbs spices you have around your kitchen ginger root, cinnamon, fennel seed, boil some water place the grand fir needles or any fir you may have growing nearby, pour the boiling hot water over the fir and add the the other roots you have, let steep and enjoy. 

     Grand fir tree medicine has a distinctly aromatic respiratory effect with a pine lemon orange scent, lightly astringent, the disinfectant topical sap as an ointment for open skin wounds, internally mildly diuretic, importantly as an expectorant especially the runny sap and fragrant needle leaves.  With most long lived trees, the resinous sap functions to heal wounds on the external tree surface. These saps and resins have broad antimicrobial action and have been refined for hundreds of thousands of years in the crucible of the trees evolutionary history. You can easily gather from the blister bumps on the lower portion of younger trees. The leaf needles produces a light clear aromatic essential oil through steam distillation useful in salves, as an ingredient in a pleasant aromatic room spray, a few drops in a cup of fir needle tea, in boiling water as a steam inhalation for colds, as an addition to formulas for coughs and respiratory congestion. Fir medicine has an ability to produce a productive cough and seems to go directly to the lungs. 

      Using the medicine: immediately upon ingestion the terpine lipid aromatic constituents travel into the bronchial lung world environment and lend their aromatic anti microbial, anti-viral, anti-bacterial qualities to loosen secretions, helping to produce more effective cough. The same constituents which ensured the survival of the tree against physical stress from wind storm and pathogens in the environment begin to work in some of the same ways in your body. Just as breaks in the integrity of your skin can open pathways for infection, so too breaks in integrity of the tree surface open ways for pathways of infection in the fir. The easily gathered sap can be used topically, directly on the surface of warm, hot inflamed skin wounds to both aid granulation and address infected wounds to speed healing, acting as an alterative in wound healing. It has a soothing quality and doesn't pinch or burn. It has a mild anesthetic quality and draws down the sharp inflammation. It helps to form granulation tissue in wounds. 

young small fir are best for leaf needle tea

     When using abundant fir tree medicine in your herb think tank, use your entire folk herbal base knowledge with fir. It's forgiving and easy to work with. It's available winter, spring summer. Often with hard to come by exotic rare herbs, using the herb gets locked into narrow pathways due to availability. Those herbs are expensive. Maybe you've only seen it once or twice face to face. Or maybe you've never seen it. Or it grows a hundred fifty miles from you and your car has bald tires and the engine light is on. You only have a tiny bit, you may not see it again, so you hoard its use. You heard and read from an expert, who heard and read from another expert, that such and such herb does this or that so you repeat, and re-repeat the cliche expert phrases. The pinacea fir tree medicines you can make your own. If you make up a formula that doesn't work out, you can trash it and start fresh, knowing that for hundreds of miles fir will be with you, year in year out. You don't have to order online, it's right there. You don't need 190 proof alcohol, you can use vodka, tequila, honey, vinegar, hot water, or just the resin itself direct. 

     It lends itself well to instilled oil, steam distillation, oxymel, steam, cough syrup, tincture, chest rub, glycerites and salve. In addition fir is a circulatory stimulant and function well in topical liniments, rubs, massage oils, and salt rubs. 

     Playing around with Fir: it's important to play around with herbs, to experiment and experience whatever fir has to say. Start with one tree plant medicine and use your insight to go outward to other similar trees. Fir is light and doesn't have heavy complex chemistry. Some of the other conifers are harsh, almost at the point where the taste is too astringent, too aromatic. Fir needle is a tasty tea beverage. You don't need complex intricate tools or understanding to work with fir. You don't have to pay to attend an online seminar done by a expert rooted in complex cliche verbiage mainly designed to befuddle rather than clarify, to approach fir tree medicine. You know this plant since childhood, whether your family were catholics, pagans, atheists you already have deep memories and experience with this tree. You don't need to wack out or puke out in the rainforest, fir it's near, right there wherever you are and importantly where you need to be. 

Get to know Abies, Fir forest medicine

      Let's play around with some basic simple stuff you can begin right now. Reread if you need to the identification. I put some pictures up on the leaf needles. As far as a look alike, there is one plant in the pacific northwest you don't want to confuse with fir. In the Pacific Northwest there is yew. Yew has a much more complex chemistry. Kind of like an advanced level, maybe some time down the road you can check it out. The bark on yew is papery and brown. The berry like seeds called arils are pulpy and red, fir lacks any kind of red seed. The needles on yew are much shorter, they lack the dual white stomata on the underside of the needle. Know your fir, work with one tree at a time, get to know it in and out. Once familiar with fir then move onto other widely available tree plant medicines. Understand the basic principle that trees through thousands of years have developed complex broad spectrum antimicrobial substances in their sap and resinous pitch that are easily utilized in your herbal medicine practice. 

Steam distillation essential oil

      Abies grandis is unique in that the bumps and blisters contain a runny clear liquid that is easily gathered. Go from tree to tree and gather both the visible pale yellow drips, and using two spoons press on the blister and with the second spoon collect the clear liquid. There are some other ways to gather the sap but at the beginning try this gathering method. It's straightforward, you see a bump on the grey bark, you press on it, and a light clear liquid squishes out. Place both the visible dripping golden sap and the clear liquid you are gathering and mix them together in a small jar. This antimicrobial liquid can be placed on skin, or with gauze to heal any kind of boil, red raised warm infected puncture wounds from splinters, relatively superficial skin scrapes, road rash from scapes, blisters etc. It's an amazing liquid and since it's labor intensive to gather you'll treasure it. 

     The Abies grandis clear liquid gathered from the blisters and the visible gooey pitch is extremely mild compared to hardened yellow pine pitch. Compared to other conifers it is slightly salty, sweet, neutral astringency, not as hard on the kidneys yet highly aromatic. It can be applied directly to open wounds and skin, either while in the field or saved in a small jar for later use or to add to formulas.

The silver grey bark, Grand Fir

The golden sap drops Abies Fir

     An excellent cough syrup can be made from placing fir needles chopped small covering with brandy, tequila or whiskey. Letting it sit for 14 days then strain, then adding honey in a ratio of 1:3 one part honey to 3 parts of the strained liquid. You can make all kinds of adjustments as you get to know the plants in your area. 

    Depending where you are Prunus spp bark, Mainanthenum racemosum root, Osmorhiza spp, sweet cicely, Balsamorhiza sagittata, arrow leaf balsam , rose hips, along with Abies grandis needles can be added to the first liquid, tinctured, strained then to the mixture add 3:1, 3 parts tinctured herbs to one part honey and have an exceptional cough respiratory syrup.

     Another method is to place the herbs finely chopped in boiling water, making sure they are covered with 2 inches water. Cover and let boil for an hour, when ready the water will just cover the herbs, usually an hour over low heat. Turn the heat off, let the mixture cool overnight. Strain the mixture and for every cup of the liquid 8 ounces, decoction add 1/2 cup or 4 ounces honey. You could add one ounce of tequila, whiskey or rum per 12 ounces of liquid as a preservative but in my experience this has not been necessary. A dose would be 1 tablespoon every hour, or a teaspoon every hour for children until improving. 

    To make a simple oxymel, fill a quart Mason jar 3/4 full with finely chopped fir needles, add apple cider vinegar to cover fir needles,  then add enough honey to fill the jar with 1/2 inch to the top. Cover the top with wax paper, shake every day and the oxymel wil be ready in 10-14 days. You can use it mixed with olive oil and salt on fresh dandelion or any salad greens. You can add garlic, onion, cayenne, ginger to make a fir vinegar to have at table as a condiment and seasoning. 

https://youtu.be/_GfFFluu_Fg

Going Free

All lyrics and music by Paul Manski, recorded 6/5/2020, all music vocals, bass, and guitar by Paul Manski

“ Going Free, going free, 

We’re gathering our tribe and family.

Going Free, going free,

We will never apologize or take the knee.

Brothers and sisters, strong are we,

We will live out the truth

Recapture our destiny.

We will walk confidently,

We gather to live the truth

That is meant to be.

Going Free, going free, 

We’re gathering our tribe and family.

Going Free, I’m  going free,

I will never apologize or take the knee.

Our blood is great and good’

I promise you will see.

Walking hand in hand,

In the forested north country.

We will take our place

And make a stand.

In the north doug fir

Red cedar land.

Going Free, going free, 

We’re gathering our tribe and family.

Going Free, we’re  going free,

I will never apologize or take the knee,

You’ll be my woman,

I’ll be your man

We’ll secure the existence of our children

In this promised land.

Going Free, going free, 

We’re gathering our tribe and family.

Going Free”

By Paul Manski

Recorded June 5,2020

     I need and want you to get comfortable with fir medicine and all the plants growing around the tree. Start with fir then move outward in a circle. A lot of folks ask, 'what's the best way to get started? an online class? a herb school? a book?', yes all of that, yet fundamentally from my perspective the best way  is to find one plant that you can meet up with face to face. Herb schools and online stuff have become problematic because there's a lot of agenda that's connected with them. The teachers are oftentimes appealing to a demographic to sell more seminars, more this and more that. These agendas can sabotage your learning journey with the plants. Especially if the reason you have been drawn to these plants is to use these medicines to increase the circle of well being of not only yourself, but for your family, for your people, our westernkind. Trees don't live in classrooms unless we redefine classrooms to mean forest. So one way or another we have to meet in the forest where the trees grow. We are not only learning about these plants for physical healing or to duplicate some medicine you can get at the pharmacy. We are doing what our ancestors have done, what you are going to do, and what you will teach others to do- heal this sickness that has entered our bio-spirit. The complex association of plant community can't be captured in a classroom or online.  Online stuff is absolutely problematic because there is no such thing as an online tree medicine. The entire composite of smells, taste, sight, hills and meadow can't even be approximated in an online class. If you want to give money away, just send the teacher some green frog skins and say, here's some money! Books are another story, well written plant identification field guides, botanical key and check lists, a loupe, topographic maps, they can really help. I don't know where you live but I have to drive 15 miles in any direction to get a cell signal so books are the way to go. Online apps and the portable cordless cellphones young people are so fond of, not so much. We will figure out how to make it happen, it will happen because we can't allow our kind to be erased, to be reduced or diminished. We will heal one another because more than anything we love one another. We love our people, that's the bottom line. 
      We can get focused on illness, what causes illness? We can put our doctor and nurse stethoscopes, put on masks, put on rubber gloves, play hospital 911 show with illness. Microbes, virus, blood work, CT scans, put on our emt first responder doctor hats...but the biggest cause of illness, sickness, dis-ease is the individualism and the disconnect that has broken up our families, broken up our tribe, broken up our westernkind culture. So what we are doing is building connections, community, family. Re-building, re-connecting, re- family-ing, becoming familiar with tree, familiar with each other. 

     So go directly to the plants. Learn that one plant in and out, topical internal, winter summer. Tree plant medicines are best for this, they don't disappear in winter. They are tangible and long lived. If your basic personality type is introvert intuitive, you can use that to get to know the tree better. Sit with it. Do simple breathing exercises where you visualize the roots and the visible tree body above ground. Get to a place where the energy transfer from the underground roots to the sunward above ground portion of the tree synchronizes with your in out breathing. Visualize the roots and put your breath into the tree. You can visualize the North Star polaris overhead and how the bear and dog turn around with polaris unmoving. Plants  are in families, not unlike human families. If you know Mary Beth Sullivan and she liked carrot cake on her birthaday, chances are if you meet Diedre Sullivan and she's Mary Beth's sister, you can probably count on if you baked Diedre a carrot cake for her birthday she's going to appreciate it. It's not much more complex than that. By going into one tree plant family medicine like fir, you'll understand the other Sullivan, Pinacea pine family tree medicines. Another plant tree medicine to start with might be Populus, aspen, cottonwood, just go deeply into that one tree. In the process of arranging your time with that tree plant medicine you'll find other, annuals, shrubs, green things growing under the fir. Branch out to those plants one at a time, get to know them. For that reason it helps if the tree plant medicine grows right close, as in outside your window. You don't want to start out with elaborate exotic far away plants. Here I don't mean invasive or non-native, by exotic far away I mean close by, for example eucalyptus is from Australia, but if it's growing outside your window, and there are eucalyptus growing near by, then that may be the tree for you. In general though pine, fir family, cottonwood, aspen, birch, maple, tree family medicines are the best to start out with. You don't want to get baffled and confused. Look for a tree family medicine that is abundant and near you then branch out in a circle from that specific tree. Everything you need to know is close by, right there. 
    For instance in the picture below is a young Abies grandis, Great Fir. In the bottom left of the tree is arnica, to the right bunch berry, above past the bunchberry are wild strawberry, although blurry some avens and cinquefoil, bottom left uva-ursi, pipsisewa- there is basically a northwest medicine garden without going anywhere. So hunker down, find your tree, find your spot and dig in for the long haul. It's about bringing these plant medicines back to your, our people for the long haul. On a basic level, security is at risk because the fundamental relationships that make up our western society are no longer trustworthy. Going to a physician or clinic is also going to the new stasi-police-medico conglomeration. What you say or don't say to the nurse, nurse practitioner, physician could affect your employment, your ability to keep your children in your home under your care. A simple matter of fact statement to a health care worker could easily land you in an observational lock down psych-facility. A statement your son or daughter makes to a school counselor could wind up landing your child in state CPS child protective temporary foster care, with a lengthy complex hearing process to get your children back in your home. People are literally fired from their jobs for making statements that oppose a new cultural narrative. People are right now at this present moment in prison for statements of belief in western countries. 

young Abies grandis, Great Fir with plant community 

     Know that these plant medicines as I have directly seen recently can be the difference between above ground vs below ground status on a gut level. I can say without reservation that by doing this plant study, you or someone you love and care about will be alive versus being a memory. I had to deal with this scenario directly, face to face as the bug hit with infection and the enforced lockdown protocol. I was able to use the formulas of native wild plants I have worked with to recover and claw back. Know that all that went down is a dress rehearsal for deeper and more severe enforcement and erasure of resistance. Whatever is going down now as portrayed by the media is not remotely resistance, it is capitulation and cooperation with the regime agenda. The window of opportunity to peacefully gather together in love is seriously diminished. I advocate health, peace and love for our people, nothing more, nothing less.
     We are heading into some dark times and it's becoming more and more difficult to rely on things and institutions that nurtured and protected us and our loved ones in the recent past to carry on into the present restructuring and erasure process. You need not only the herbal medicines to get you through the infectious pathogens, you also need a psychological defense against the meme pathogens widely infecting our sphere. Many disease processes are made more insidious via an impaired altered immune response due to a complex psychological assault on the unique bio-spirit of westernkind. The ubiquitous self-inflicted dis-ease processes of alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, autism, physical self mutilation are now rights of passage into a partial slow process suicide cult. The paralysis of the bio-spirit encouraged and inflicted by a multi-factorial regime agenda must be both outed and dealt with effectively and compassionately.  More than anything,  right now I invite you to enter this positive sphere of well being via the pathway of love through these plant medicines. There are compassionate friends here. We have no experts only facilitators. These future meet ups are about going deeper into the process of allowing the spontaneous bio-spirit archetypes to be returned to function, to heal one another through a circle of love. At this point there seems to only be this choice to care for one another and re-invigorate our common resilient ancestral spirit alive in each one of us, and work together going free.

     You need to learn these plants and medicines now. I can't tell you how many plant medicine books are in my hand that a few years ago were in libraries. Libraries are being de-populated by an algorithm of erasure. That erasure process is accelerating on many fronts. Just yesterday I talked to an older man, he bought 3 acres for ten thousand dollars. Not that long ago, not in ancient times, fairly recently. He was making at the time thirty thousand a year. So for one third of his annual income he was able to secure for himself a homestead. If you are a young person living in 2020, you may have to pay, ten to twelve times your annual salary to secure a homestead for your family. In many ways that is not doable. That's how the subtle erosion and erasure occurs in real time of our people. Learning, re-learning these plant medicines is the real work of existing in love, doing no harm into the future. Do it, don't delay. Know that it's not only for you but for those who will live and love on after you've gone.

    ...share these plant teachings freely 

     

Nootka bush rose petals excellent in fir tea

     

     

     

Monoterpenes (62.95%)

Esters (18.65%)

Sesquiterpenes (12.93%)

Other (3.31%)

Monoterpenols (1.70%)

Aliphatic Aldehydes (0.26%)

Ketones (0.20%)

Beta-pinene, alpha and beta pinene, bornyl acetate, beta-phellandrene, limoline, methyl thymol

References

1. Moerman DE. Native American Ethnobotany. Timber Press; 1998.
2. Wood M. The Earthwise Herbal: A Complete Guide to Old World Medicinal Plants. North Atlantic Books; 2008.
3. Bensky D, Clavey S, Stöger E. Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica. Eastland Press; 2004.
4. Moore M. Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West. Museum of New Mexico Press; 2003.
5. Thomas V. Gamkrelidze; Indo-Europeans and the Indo-Europeans. 1994
6. Charles W. Kane. Medicinal Plants of the Western Mountain States. Lincoln Town Press. 2017
7. Tokos, George Mike. The Nature of the Chemical Constituents of Grand Fir Bark (abies Grandis Lindl). : Oregon State College. 2012