Eating pine needles - yum yum

Tornadoboy · Aug 23, 2006

Here's an off-the-wall question that ought to generate some laughs, is it safe to eat and/or make tea out of pine needles from trees in North Eastern USA?

I've got a couple of characters marooned in a blizzard without any food in New Hampshire and I've heard that one can boil pine needles for a tea-like concoction, is it safe to do so? I'm going camping next week in the White Mountains and I may give it a shot just to satisfy my curiousity and to know how to describe the taste, which I suspect will be none too pleasant, but I figure I can have a lot of fun tormenting my characters with this course of action.
Do I have to be careful about what kinds of needles I use? I'm thinking of using just common spruce trees, assuming I really know what a spruce looks like.

Addendum: I do mean fresh off the tree needles, not dead one's off the ground... yuck.

WishWords · Aug 23, 2006

I used to chew them when I was a kid back in Missouri. They are bitter and will cut the heck out of your mouth, but apparently harmless. I don't think there are many nutrients in them.

triceretops · Aug 23, 2006

The huge quadaped dinosaurs loved conifer needles. Just not much in nutritional value department. How about roots and tubors?

Tri

Tornadoboy · Aug 23, 2006

Oops, my reply got listed twice for some reason, look below.

Tornadoboy · Aug 23, 2006

triceretops said:
How about roots and tubors?

Tri

Its a nice thought but I don't think either of them are that 'street wise' when it comes to survival eating, and I don't think that would work in the dead of winter with the ground frozen.
The whole pine needles-thing is more of a comic diversion as I don't think they're going to be trapped so long that they will be at risk of genuine starvation, but they will be for long enough to be bouncing off the walls and getting a little desperate.
Well, at least that's the way I've got it written right now, but being a newbie of the worst kind that could change any second.

A. Hamilton · Aug 24, 2006

apparantly they can battle scurvy.
personally i'd be more likely to try to kill and eat a rodent or a fish and use the needles to clean my teeth after.

Monet · Aug 24, 2006

(DISCLAIMER NOTE: Don't try this at home unless you do much more research.... I am not a plant person and have not eaten any of the below. I have a survival book I got this out of and can't guarantee that eating the below is absolutely safe.)

Although deer and other animals have been known to survive a harsh winter by eating pine needles, I can't imagine someone making a tea with them and drinking it. Nasty... not even sure if it would be fit for human consumption.

Also in the White Mountain area, there are more hardwood trees than pine trees, the pine tree forests are more toward the coastal areas (Maine)

One other idea, would be wild rose hips. The plants are numerous in the area. (I'm from Maine and have often gone to the White Mountains. The rose hips, small red or orange 'fruits' ripen in autumn and after the first frost, their flavor and color gets stronger. They are also rich in vitamin C and iron. Deer also love them and will often uncover the plants from the snow, so your characters could find them if there was snow on the ground.

Your characters may have even heard of 'rose' tea and might be more apt to try it out, instead of pine needles.

I'd rather try to leach out the tannin of the acorns (soak in running water after breaking the shells) and eat them then try pine needles. There are an abundance of oak trees in the white mountain area also.

There are so many edible plants. Also with the marshes and along ponds, (look for where the moose are) Cattails (their pollen) can be used to make pancakes. So I imagine you could mix it with water and eat it as a paste if you couldn't cook it.

Scrawler · Aug 24, 2006

This thread reminds of the the Grape Nuts cereal advertisement, where Euell Gibbons said, "Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible."

BardSkye · Aug 24, 2006

Have you ever looked at the ingredients in Buckley's cough syrup? If you want to know what pine tastes like...

(I actually rather like it, but then I like spruce and ginger beer as well.)

smallthunder · Aug 25, 2006

Pine -- the breakfast of champions

Pine needles are high in vitamin C, but not much else. If I remember correctly, eating the inner bark of the tree is not only safe, but more satisfying.

As for the acorn suggestion -- you've really got to soak the buggers in fresh water again and again (better yet, boil) to make them taste anything close to palatable. I think I would rather chew those pine needles ...

J. Weiland · Aug 25, 2006

Be careful not to cook the spruce beetles; they might be poisonous

, or at least a tad bitter.

Evaine · Aug 28, 2006

I think I'd go with the rose hips - I've made rose hip jelly, and it was very nice with ice cream.
The Moomins ate pine needles, in the children's books by Tove Janssen.

FalconDance · Aug 28, 2006

The roots of cattails can be washed, dried and pounded down for flour. Or they can be sliced and fried or roasted.

Pine needles are edible, but not very palatable unless you are really, really hungry/thirsty. As far as I know (I'm an herbalist but not a know-all), none of the various evergreen needles are toxic unless they've been sprayed, of course. If you want, I can certainly look into it further.

MadScientistMatt · Aug 29, 2006

I used to chew pine needles all the time when I was little, and yes, I've heard of people making tea out of them. I would not describe them as bitter, actually, but they do taste about how you can imagine. Like a Christmas tree smells.

Edited to add - I just thought of a few other things they could try eating that you might possibly find in that climate. Not much will be in season in the winter, but they may find some nuts. And it is also possible to eat acorns (the inside of them, that is - the outer shell is unedible), but you wouldn't want to eat them unless you first soak them in water for a good long time and then roast them. If you prepare them like that, their flavor will improve from unbearably vile to bearably vile.

WindWeaver · Sep 3, 2006

A friend of mine actually enjoys eating pine needles. She's 62 years old, and grew up in the wilds of Colorado. She's always munching on them when we are hiking or cross country skiing. Colorado has a large variety of pines; probably different in your territory. You can't survive off of them. Tea is fair, very mild to strong depending on if you get pine sap included with the needles. Another tidbit: swallowing a ball of pine sap acts as a decongestant and can make one cough up deep phlegm. Yeah that's gross, I know, but you are writing about stranded in the woods ... could conjure up a funny scene. I actually tried that when I was detoxing my body from quitting smoking. It works.

Eating pine needles - yum yum

Tornadoboy

I bite

WishWords

triceretops

Tornadoboy

I bite

Tornadoboy

I bite

A. Hamilton

here for a minute...catch me?

Monet

Scrawler

Bored fanatic

BardSkye

Barbershoppin' Harmony Whore

smallthunder

Ruled by Dachshunds

J. Weiland

Lurker

Evaine

FalconDance

MadScientistMatt

Empirical Storm Trooper

WindWeaver