Actually, what non-caffeinated teas/tisanes/drinks do folks make along the trail from gathered material?
Several favourites, mostly mid-day, or suppertime:
I make cedar or pine teas. (Mostly ’green-in-a-green-cup’, i.e., relatively colourless … but tasty, and perhaps some small benefits.)
I make another fragrant tasty tea from Sweet Gale (lakeshore plant in our north. Also Labrador tea, from farther northern boggy grounds.
I've also made tea from chaga, the fungus Inonotus obliquus, off White Birch. Earthy and very pleasant taste, with lots of purported benefits, though none well demonstrated.
However, for my morning constitutional, nothing beats strong coffee. Nothing.
Ever since I was little, I’ve made tea from the root of Queen Anne’s Lace, one of the most common plants in the east. It has a taste reminiscent of carrots and licorice.
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...not to be confused with poison hemlock.
http://www.ravensroots.com/blog/2015...son-hemlock-id
White pine needle tea top of my list, sassafras tea is second.
Birch, spruce, pine, chaga, labrador, rose hips, hibiscus, lavender, various mints, echinacea, dandelion, some verbenas, thyme, ginger, turmeric, sassafras, yohimbe, Dogwood bark, slippery elm, red maple, beech, various fruit trees, blueberryhuckleberry leaves and fruit, couple of cranberries
Dont know what you're calling sweet gale
Citrus
Ive tried store bought stinging nettle tea but want to give it a try on trail
Didn't realize dogwood bark was 'edible'. Do you use twigs? Is it also bark from the red maple, beech and fruit trees?
I drink a LOT of dried stinging nettle 'tea' - lots of vitamins, minerals, etc. Very healthy. I think it's also helped with my allergies, although it's also possible that's been helped along by some of the other herb 'teas'.
I also drink a lot of raspberry leaf, red clover, and lemon balm 'teas'; lesser amounts of alfalfa, chamomile, linden leaf and flower, mints, oatstraw, passion flower, yarrow, and others I'm not remembering right now.
-FA
yaupon holly...down in Florida. Don't think it ranges up to the AT though...maybe the southern stretches. I recently learned about it, supposedly the only naturally occurring plant, I think it was in North America, that contains caffeine. I think I over roasted the leaves. Maybe I'll try it again some day. I sure would like to take some classes to learn more hands-on about edible plants in my area. Kindof a hard thing to read about, when most books cover a lot of stuff that doesn't grow here...gets confusing to me. Also hard to relate pictures to the real thing some times.
I've heard it called by another common na me bog myrtle.
Don't believe the USA hardiness maps for Ilex vomitoria - yaupon. It can be grown in Zone 7 especially cultivars. I used to incorporate Ilex vomitoria "Schillings", also know under the alternative name "Stokes Dwarf", a Monrovia introduction, mainly in commercial designs in eastern PA and much of NJ.
There's a strikingly beautiful weeping form of I. vomitoria cultivar, especially when dripping in small dark red abundant fruit, but less hardy than "Stokes", when allowed to exist without being massacred into a tightly sheared formal monstrosity, called Pendula. I use it as an accent in its natural form unsheared in fte form naturalized xeriscape designs in the south.
I wasn't gung ho on yaupon tea unless it had much honey in it. I can say that about most foraged teas unless adding some leaves with sweetness, flowers, or fruit.
I've made tea from Cornus florida bark and young twigs, the most common east coast native flowering dogwood, commonly referred to as flowering dogwood, abundant on the AT. Identifying it after so many other AT hikers asking about it is how I recieved my trail name Dogwood.
Cornus canadensis, commonly called bunch berry because of its very noticable clustering red berries, or creeping dogwood, because it resembles a ground cover usually less than 7" tall, also found on the AT
...also found on the AT I've made tea from the leaves and eaten the berries. The berries and bunch berry plant are sometimes confused with teaberry, Gaultheria procumbens, sometimes commonly called wintergreen another AT foraged edible.
Wintergreen can be also made into a tea. Teaberry became famous for Teaberry Gum.
Getting back to Cornus genus if you find very ripe Cornus kousa fruit, that looks like a strawberry, they can be delish. This is a non native non invasive extremely atrractive in all 4 seasons small tree commonly called Chinese or Japansee dogwood.
I live for this as a plant geek.