Trembling aspen
Populus tremuloides
Also called Quaking aspen, Poplar
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
The white-barked tree whose leaves shake in the smallest breeze, and the tree that gives the aspen parkland its name. The inner bark carries the same family of compounds as aspirin.
Speak with someone who knows this plant before you harvest it.
Take care
- Salicylates. Not for anyone with an aspirin allergy, and not for children with a fever.
What it is confused with
Easily confusedBalsam poplar Populus balsamifera
Balsam poplar has dark furrowed bark on older trees, pointed oval leaves on round stalks, and fat sticky fragrant buds in spring.
Easily confusedPaper birch Betula papyrifera
Birch bark peels in papery horizontal sheets and is marked with long horizontal lines. Aspen bark does not peel.
How to know it
- Bark
- Smooth, chalky white-green, often with a powder that comes off on your hand. Dark scars and black knots where branches have gone.
- Leaves
- Nearly round with a short point, on flattened stalks, which is why they shake in any breeze.
- Habit
- Grows in clones from the roots, so a whole stand is often one organism.
The country it grows in
- Aspen parkland
- Foothills and shrubland
- Coulee slopes
- Mountain forest
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Bark May to JuneInner bark lifts most easily while the sap is running.
Right now it is July. Nothing on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Skin and wounds
- Tools and materials
Inner bark contains salicylates, the aspirin family, and is documented in use for pain and fever.
The white powder on the bark has long been used as a rough sunscreen.
How it is prepared
- Simmered
Inner bark simmered into a bitter tea.
Anyone who reacts badly to aspirin should leave this alone, and it is not given to children with a fever.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.
Take bark from a branch or from a tree already down rather than from a standing trunk, and never take a ring all the way around.