Sustainably Harvesting Conifer Resins & Conifer Resin Salve
Resin dripping down a White Pine trunk from a hole made by a Pileated Woodpecker
Winter is a great time to work with and harvest conifer resin (also often referred to as pitch). It's much less sticky and viscous in the winter than other times, due to the cold temperatures, which makes it much easier to harvest! Locally, White Pine (Pinus strobus) is our most abundant conifer that produces resin and you can also find it in Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea) and Spruce species (Picea spp), with Norway Spruce (Picea abies) being our most locally abundant Spruce as it’s often planted as a landscape tree. A quick note on vocabulary- when the resin is still inside the tree, flowing through the cambium layer of the bark, it's referred to as sap and once it starts exuding from the tree it's referred to as resin or pitch.
So, what makes it flow out of the tree? Understanding this helps us understand why sustainably harvesting it is so important. I think of the sap/resin/pitch as a part of the immune system of the tree. It's rich in antimicrobial essential oils, which are what give it its characteristic conifer scent, and is secreted by the tree when a branch is cut or breaks off, when it's eaten or disturbed by wildlife, injured by insects, and so on. It acts like an antimicrobial band-aid for the tree and helps create a seal which keeps the wound from getting infected.
For this reason it's very important when we're harvesting to never take the resin right off the affected area where the tree was wounded. For instance, in the photos above and below, sustainably harvesting the resin would look like scraping it off the bark where it's dripped down from the hole made by the Pileated Woodpecker, NOT scraping it off the area where it's directly being exuded from the tree. Pretty simple, right? For folks who are foragers and wildcrafters it's so important to understand the ecology of the plant you're working with, otherwise you may be doing harm! And depending on the conifer species, you can sometimes find chunks of resin that have fallen from the tree onto the forest floor beneath the tree, which is an extremely sustainable way to harvest. I’ve seen this with both Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa) and Pinyon Pine (Pinus edulis) out west, but rarely with our local species.
My two favorite ways to work with resin medicinally are as incense (either on its own burned on charcoal or in a kyphi solid incense) and in salves. In both cases it's fine if you have bits of bark stuck to the resin when you make your medicine and, heads-up, it's virtually impossible to harvest a clean piece of resin since it’s so sticky, which is totally fine! Even with bits of bark attached, it still makes great incense and you can melt the resin right into an herbal infused oil when you're warming it to make a salve and simply strain out the debris that separates from the resin as it dissolves into the oil. More on making a salve with conifer resin and its medicinal benefits below!
Conifer Resin Salve
White Pine (Pinus strobus) resin
Ingredients:
1 cup olive oil
1 tbsp conifer resin (Pine, Spruce, and Firs can all be used here)
8 tsp grated beeswax or finely chopped beeswax
Directions:
Combine the resin and olive oil in a pan on the stove and gently warm. It’s fine if the resin has debris stuck to it, such as tree bark, leaves, dirt, etc, as we will be straining the final salve. Warm the oil on low and let the resin melt into oil. Once it’s completely melted, add the beeswax and again heat on low until it’s melted. Let cool for a few minutes and then strain it all through a mesh strainer and/or a few layers of cheesecloth into a small glass jar to remove any debris that was attached to the resin. It will harden in the jar as it cools!
Use:
Conifer resin has a whole host of topical applications including splinters, sores, boils, sore muscles and rheumatism, cuts and swellings, and is sometimes also mixed with butter or fat for this. It has powerful drawing powers and contains abietic acid which stimulates topical circulation, the inflammatory response, and the “foreign body response”- meaning pus and fluids will build up much more quickly on a wound that is dressed with conifer resin. BUT the other side of the coin is that one moves through the healing process much faster and avoids serious infection as the infection is quite literally drawn out of the wound. Conifer resin is also quite high in many essential oils which contain immune-stimulating properties, promote localized circulation, and have anti-microbial properties. This is wonderful as an all purpose salve and you can also add resin to any salve you’re making using this same method.
Happy medicine-making!
