The Forest Raised A Christmas Tree

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

There are a couple of hours left before the New Year. In the house there is a decorated artificial tree, and outside the window a living beauty is buried in snow, glittering with snowflakes in the moonlight. She recalls her ancestors, who were born 145 million years ago, when giant lizards roamed the Earth, and winged pterodactyls flew across the sky. Since those legendary times, she has been accumulating healing properties in order to present them to people

Healer tree

Norway spruce is a member of the Pine family. Its cone-shaped crown lends slenderness to a 35-50 meter tree, and its four-sided dark green needles are a faithful outfit at any time of the year. The slenderness of the tree does not at all spoil the diameter of the trunk, which can reach 1 meter. Not everyone is able to hug such a beauty.

The gray bark of old spruces exfoliates from the trunk with thin scales. The branchy branches droop slightly to the surface of the earth. In early spring, when young branches are covered with light green buds, they are especially rich in healing powers. But they ate resin, and its cones, and needles are also filled with healing elixirs.

The healing properties of ordinary spruce

Norway spruce is famous for its antimicrobial and antispasmodic properties. This is helped by ascorbic acid, carotene and chlorophyll contained in all parts of the spruce. Chlorophyll, for example, is a powerful regulator of metabolic processes in the human body, and also helps to improve blood circulation.

Spruce has not in vain accumulated its healing properties for millions of years. She seemed to know that there would come a time when a person would need her ability to calm an excited nervous system, relieve fatigue and stress of the 21st century.

Green shoots of common spruce, its young cones and needles are antiscorbutic, choleretic, diaphoretic and diuretic.

Tinctures, infusions and decoctions

Tinctures, infusions and decoctions made from spruce help a person to restore strength, fight viruses and microbes.

Spruce bud tincture will help to cope with purulent sore throat, bronchial asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, rhinitis.

Decoction of spruce buds it is used for bronchitis, catarrh of the upper respiratory tract, pulmonary tuberculosis, rheumatism.

Infusion of young cones used for gargling with sore throat, as well as for inhalation for respiratory diseases, including with a runny nose, sinusitis, pneumonia, bronchial asthma.

Broth of pine needles and spruce resin used externally in the treatment of rheumatism, various wounds on the skin, neuralgia.

Preparation time

Healing buds are harvested in the spring, carefully cutting them off at the base.

In the summer, they organize a collection of cones.

Amber lumps of spruce resin can be harvested in any season of the year.

Recipes from ordinary spruce

Bath from fatigue

Preparing for the New Year's feast, the hostesses get so tired that sometimes it becomes not at all a joy to sit at the table. To relieve fatigue, a few handfuls of spruce needles are enough. After boiling, filtering and adding the broth to the prepared bath, relax in the healing water for 15 minutes, take a shower and you can go to the festive table.

Inhalation for chronic bronchitis

Mix equal parts spruce resin and yellow wax, then melt and cool. Put the pieces of the mixture on hot coals. The smoke released at the same time is inhaled by the diseased bronchi, relieving them of the disease.

Healing skin wounds

Wounds on the skin can be sprinkled with dried spruce bark, ground to a powder.

Or you can resort to using spruce resin mixed in equal amounts with beeswax, honey and vegetable oil. We heat the resulting mixture, mix and let it cool. It turns out a semblance of an ointment with which we lubricate ulcers, abscesses and abrasions on the skin.