Christmas trees make a great cup of tea
White spruce with cones (Photo by Manitoba Museum)
Every day, the Google search engine is inundated with searches for the next superfood, health trend or nutritional qualities of certain foods. Sadly, very few people know that you can make a beverage high in vitamin C from...Christmas trees!
In addition to being a popular Christmas tree, fir needles can be used to make beverages high in vitamin C. (Photo by Manitoba Museum)
The Indigenous peoples of North America have long known of the health-giving properties of some cone-bearing (also called evergreen) trees. In Canada, First Nations peoples drank an herbal tea of evergreen needles to ward off scurvy, usually in winter when fresh fruits and vegetables were hard to come by. This simple remedy was not known by early British and French explorers, who often succumbed to this disease. Scurvy causes weakness, gum disease, impairs healing and eventually leads to fever, convulsion and death. Symptoms set in after about a month of low to no vitamin C intake. The explorer Jacques Cartier was told about a scurvy remedy by the Indigenous people he encountered in eastern Canada, who felt pity for the suffering Europeans. Cartier was so impressed at the ability of the tea to cure scurvy that he called the tree species an "arbre de vie” or “tree of life.”
The plant used to make Cartier's tea may have been a cedar. (Photo by Manitoba Museum)
Evergreen needle tea is also high in vitamin A ― which you need to prevent blindness ― folic acid and minerals. The tea can be brewed by collecting the youngest needles on a tree (the ones right at the tip), coarsely chopping them, pouring boiling water over them and steeping for a few minutes. About a tablespoon of needles to a cup of water is about the right proportion. Although spruces are the most common trees used to make herbal teas, other cone-bearing trees including pine, fir, cedar and larch can also be used. I prefer to have it in a blend with some dried mint to add extra flavour.
Although it bears cones tamarack (Larix laricina) is not an evergreen; it loses its needles in the fall. (Photo by Manitoba Museum)
On the east coast, European settlers began making an alcoholic version of this beverage by adding spruce needles to molasses (from the Caribbean) and yeast to make spruce beer. By 1738, George Spence, the Hudson's Bay Company surgeon in Fort Albany, Ontario, reported making and providing spruce beer to HBC employees as an anti-scorbutic. This knowledge was eventually passed on to the British Military by Sir Joseph Banks, who encountered the beverage when he was botanizing in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766. Captain James Cook brought casks of this beer on board his ships in the late 1700s (along with various other foods, such as citrus fruits) and did not lose a single man to scurvy! If you’re so inclined, a recipe for spruce beer can be found here.
Warnings
Evergreen teas should be drunk in moderation (a cup of weak tea a day is probably fine) as large amounts are reported to be toxic. Pregnant women should not drink evergreen tea as it may cause miscarriage.
The toxic yew (Taxus spp.) trees have fleshy red cones, not dry ones. (Photo by Rob Routledge/Wikimedia Commons)
Yew trees are really poisonous so make sure you can tell a yew apart from other cone-bearing trees. Yews have flat needles with pointed tips and fleshy red fruits with a single seed in the middle instead of dry cones. They are not common in Manitoba and the shrubs are usually less than two metres tall.
Below is a simple identification key to Manitoba’s wild cone-bearing trees. To use it, select the statement (a or b) that best describes the plant. The number at the end of the line relates to one of the numbered items beneath. Continue selecting statements until you come to the name of a species. Then double check the identity by consulting a field guide or reputable website. Please note that there are some exotic cone-bearing trees planted in urban areas, which may not be in this key.
1a. Trees with scale-like, overlapping leaves................................Eastern white cedar
1b. Trees with needle-like leaves.................................................2
2a. Leaves in clusters of two to many..............................................3
2b. Leaves borne singly.................................................................4
3a. Leaves in clusters of 10 to 40, deciduous; base of clusters without a sheath...tamarack
3b. Leaves in clusters of two to five, evergreen; base of clusters enclosed in a sheath......pine
4a. Leaves four-sided, not appearing two-ranked, borne on short woody pegs........spruce
4b. Leaves flat, appearing two-ranked, not borne on woody pegs...........................5
5a. Leaves rounded or notched at the tip; bearing dry cones; bark grey and smooth or scaly...balsam fir
5b. Leaves pointed at the tip; bearing reddish fleshy fruits with a single seed in the middle; bark reddish and shred...Canada yew
This blog post originally appeared on Diana Bizecki Robson's Botany blog for the Manitoba Museum on November 22, 2016.
About the Author
Diana Bizecki Robson is the curator of botany at The Manitoba Museum.
