Top 5 Medicinal and Useful Plants of the Eastern Woodlands Part 1.wmv

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Tags: Pathfinder,Bushcraft,Survival,Primitive,Medicinal Plants

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even good

back in the woods afternoon guys Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school what I'd like to do today is I like to start a short series with you that's going to go along with our medicinal and useful trees of the Eastern woodlands and what I'm going to do is I'm going to make five different videos showing what I consider to be the most effective or the best five medicinal plants in the Eastern woodlands because they are both medicinal and useful and in some cases even edible so again it's just like the pieces of your kit you want everything to be multifunctional and if I can find a medicinal plant that's also edible that's also useful for other things then it's a bonus to me and those are the ones that I want to get to know the best so today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about greater moyen em you ll see I in Mullen okay I'm going to take you out show you a wild mole and rosette we're going to harvest it we're going to clean it process a little bit bring it back here and they're going to talk some more stay with me okay this is a Mullen plant right here pet spider it and it grows in drier areas that are in a lot of direct sunlight now they have a tap root so to harvest this thing we've got to get below the tap root that's where a good intention tool or a shovel comes in real handy you just get it right behind the tap root pop it out shake it off you got some root left cut a little bit of it off throw that in the bucket we'll take that back with us and we'll process it down

okay guys so here's our Mullen plant that we harvested and this is a small one in comparison because they get huge what I'm going to do with this thing to process it for use now or later doesn't really matter is I'm just going to wash it off and get the roots cleaned off first and then I'm going to take any dead leaves off of it and just chuck them in the creek anything is yellow like that and dying is going to go any sticks or plant fibers I've got in there I'm going to take out

another brown leaf right there the rest of those aren't too awful bad those look pretty good alright now I want to show you while we've got this water right here I'm going to pull one of these leaves off of here real quick I want to show you a couple of things first of all can you see how the water is kind of beating up on that that's because there's fine hairs all over this plant that are repelling that water but don't let that fool you because this thing is very very absorbent you can see all the water I'm draining out of that okay it's a very absorbent plant it's a lot of things that you can use this for will have to do with absorption okay guys so we have our mon process now to a usable form for a medicinal the Mullin plant has been used or recommended for use for over 2,000 years as a medicinal plant for pulmonary and breathing type issues accompanied by coughing cold or caused by coughing coal along with Scratchy sore throat you know hard dry coughs things like that it has a lot of Sappington's in it which are the chemical compounds in soap it also has a lot of useless in it which gives it the ability to be moisturizing so those two things in combination will help soothe the dry scratchy irritated throat but to process this properly you'll need to make a decoction from the leaves and you'll need to use green leaves now because there are so many hairs on these leaves which we looked at before those hairs are not irritating to the outside portions of your body externally ingesting them they can be irritating to the throat so when you make your decoction in other words you double boil a tea you boil it down once add water boil it down again to leach all the chemical compounds out of these leaves you'll then want to strain that through something so that you strain out all of those fine hairs so our number one use for this plant is coughing cold or any type of congestion that's the plants claim to fame but the usefulness of this plant goes way way beyond that and that's why it's in my top five okay so quickly looking at the medicinal values of the mullen plant we knew that it's good for coffee cold it's also very good as a decongestant an expectorant

in other words you feel like you're getting a cold so you take that medicinal tea now as far as the decongestant goes you really need to inhale the smoke from this plant to effectively let that happen I'm not advocating smoking to any 12 or 14 year old kids that are watching this video what I'm saying is the Native Americans and people throughout time have smoked Mullen leaves and inhaled that smoke to effectively clear their lungs that is a reported property of this plant beyond that type of use obviously it's good for bandages we had it over the creek we showed how absorbing it was we run it out and it got dry almost immediately like some kind of natural ShamWow so we know it's a good absorber we can use it for gauze we'd use it for stuff in a wound we can use it for female issues there's a lot of things that we can use this for as far as bandaging type things go or absorbing fluids liquids or blood so that's a very good property of this plant as well but distantly so we'll just call that bandages now let's look at this plant as a whole and talk about how it affects our survival priorities and what things we can do with this plant that will affect our survival priorities because that's the way I like to look at things how much multiply functionality does this one single thing have and how can I apply it to each one of my survival priorities because it helps me to break down what that plant will do for me so let's kind of get down on the board and sketch that out real quick and we'll kind of go through that a little at time hang on okay so let's look at this plant now from a survival priority standpoint and see what it can do for us because I think this is what really makes this plant outshine all the others and that's why this is the number one plan on my list obviously our first priority is self aid it's great for managing it's good for cough and cold it has absorbing properties it has antibacterial properties so it is a very good plant for that it can help me with my breathing so as far as sulfate it's great our next priority should be shelter we've got to control that body core temperature because this plant is so fluffy and hairy it makes a great insulator so we can use this for insulation our clothes and our boots and it's wicking because it absorbs and it dries very quickly as you noticed over in the creek when we run it out so that being the case it makes a good insulator for inside the clothing inside the boots inside a shelter or bed at night very very good for shelter as well so it's great for insulation the next priority to me would be fire all right the Mullin plant when the leaves are dead they burn very very well that's why you can smoke them but they also will absorb things so you can use them for wicks for oil lamps grease lamps and things like that that will help you with fire you can also take the stock of this plant which I will show you pictures at the end of this video but this plant has a very large stalk that comes out of the middle of it that has a flower head running about you know several flower heads - one flower head depending on the plant but they're very tall when that dries out and dies and the flowers are gone you can then take that dip it in some type of fuel like fat tallow oil of some kind and it will burn for a long period of time as a torch the pith inside that stalk okay when you break the stock open the pithy inside makes very good char it's one of the preferred chars for fire pistons the stock itself can be tore out at the roots and it will have a very woody tip on the end of it it's a pithy stock inside but it has a hard woody end at the bottom that you can use for a drill to make a hand roll or bow drill in an emergency doesn't work as well as other things do but it will work I have seen it done so you have char potential you have tinder potential in the dead leaves and you also have primitive fire capability with the stock so it can affect fire in at least three different ways and that's not including the torch and things like that okay so continuing on with our survival priorities our next one becomes water we've already talked about the absorption power of this plant again you know if I take a leaf off this plant and I have a puddle of water a seep I can collect that water up on the leaf and then I can drain it drink it drain it into my cup whatever the case may be so it's very good for that it's also a decent filter all right water obviously can go through it so it would make a decent filter so I can use these leaves in a worst-case scenario to filter out at the minimum particulates from my water so it becomes a filtering agent as well so for water it becomes a collection device and it becomes a filtration device that's two Biggie's when it comes to water looking it down at our priority list now we have self age shelter fire water now this is not an edible plant by any means but it can help us to collect food because one of the main chemical compounds in the seeds of this plant in that flower head when it dies and I want to make sure that I read us name correctly because one of those ones that I have a problem announcing rotenone I believe is the way you pronounce it I'm sure somebody will correct me if I'm wrong but there are about three chemical compounds that are known to be fish poisons juglone is one rotenone is another one the seeds of this plant contain rotenone so they can be ground up put into a still form of water where there's a still pool with fish in it and it will cause the fish breathing problems and make them float to the top for easy catch so as far as food goes hey I can use those seeds for poor fish poison alright excuse my writing I'm getting down the board here the stock of this plant also makes a decent arrow shaft I get the right diameter a nice dry stock it'll make a decent arrow shaft so again I appreciate you joining me for another video I appreciate your support I appreciate your views I appreciate everything that you guys do for me for my family and for my business I'll be back with another video in this series as soon as I can you

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