The Spruce


Latin name: Picea abies

We have spruces of all sizes around us, from small whisks to those in perfect size for a Yule-tree; and last but not least towering giants under whose branches you can hide and stay dry even during the most persistant rainstorm.

I think Swedes have an almost sentimental relationship with the spruce. The rustling of the wind through its branches, walking in an old forest where the sunshine softly hits the green moss filtered through a curtain of spruces. At winter, when the frosty snow makes the evergreen spruce contrast even more where some of its needles show their dark green hue under the bluish-white nuances. And of course no Yule is complete without the scent of the Yule-tree spruce, mingling with freshly baked gingersnaps and hyacinths.

The Spruce and its Uses

The spruce is mainly used for furniture and to make paper. It is one of Swedens most important exports.

But much more importantly, an old forest of mainly spruces is the biotope with the highest number of species in Swedish nature. These are mostly small or easlity overlooked living things we don't reflect upon much; moss, insects, fungi and lichen. But we should; they are an important foundation of the eco system, being food for animals and birds and digesting dead matter such as leaves and fallen trees.

The Spruce in Contemporary Herbal Medicine

Young branchlets, the needles and the resin are the parts of the spruce used in herbal medicine.

The branchlets carry soft, light green needles that contain a lot of vitamin c, and they can be eaten right off the tree. Try a small amount of them in a salad, preferably one with ruccola or other bitter leaves.

The mature needles can be steam destilled to give an extract to be used as a blood circulation stimulant by adding it to a warm bath or to massage oils.

The resin is used as an ingredient in salves to soothe rheumatism and mucle aches and it also has antiseptic properties which has helped to preserve the teeth of people as far back as the stone age.

The Spruce in Folk Medicine

The medicinal uses for the spruce are pretty much the same now as it was in older times. Perhaps we wouldn't mix the resin with cream when making the salve, but that's about it. It's worth mentioning the great value the first branchlets had to people in old days; in spring, when the last apples saved has gone bad, the lingonberries are all eaten and almost nothing else could provide vitamin c, the intensely light green, new needles kept the scurvy at bay.

The Spruce in Folk Magic

The evergreens was considered trees of fertility and, in my part of Sweden, a spruce and a pine still decorate the entrance to a homestead where a wedding is celebrated.

But the unchanging green of the spruce also symbolised life after death; young spruces with broken tops flanked the road, and chopped branches was strewn on it, when someone was brought from their home for their last journey to the funeral. The spruce was also supposed to ward off evil and keep the dead from rising and coming back home.

Spruces were used to take ailments and sicknesses from people. Either the sick person put their disease in a nail then hammered into the living tree, or in other cases money was sacrificed to a spruce. If anyone cut down such a tree, or stole the money, they would get all the ailments and diseases others had put there and die quite raplidly.

Sources

Gunnarsson, A, Träden och människan. Rabén & Sjögren, Kristianstad 1988
Holmberg, P & Eklöf, M-L, Svenska träd: Upptäck, känn igen och använd. Prisma, Slovenien 2007
Juneby, H.B. Fytomedicin - en fickhandbok om medicinalväxter. Artaromaförlaget, Gamleby 1999 Tillhagen, C-H, Skogarna och Träden. Carlssons, Stockholm 1995
www.naturcentrum.se/jattetrad
www.Wikipedia.org