Pam Sherman, Gold Hill. In this new series, Plants for People, we’ll explore how humans have used the wild plants around us in the mountains for food, drink, medicine, furniture, cookware, clothing, houses, ropes, needles, thread, animal fodder, beauty, ritual, gardening, and income—and how we continue to use them today. I hope in this way to free them from their role as beloved wallpaper to become new friend.

“How do I love thee?” asks poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “Let me count the ways.” Counting the ways aspen has been helping humans would take the space of this entire column and then some. Our local aspen’s botanical name is Populus tremuloides. In Latin “populus” means people or nation, which could refer to a stand, a “nation,” a grove of aspens, or to the close relationship between aspen and people. “Tremuloides” speaks to the way aspen leaves tremble in our winds.

Daniel Moerman’s Native American Ethnobotany database shows that at least 45 Native American tribes recorded some of their aspen uses. Bark and wood were made into hats, cordage, whistles; knots were used to make cups. Native Americans used branches for fuel and to build lodges and other shelters; rotten wood was used to wrap babies in at night, as a diaper.

Horse thieves rubbed sap on their bodies to disguise their human scent. Trees were used to make deadfall traps for bears. Leaves, branches, and roots were used ceremonially in the Sun Dance as well as other rites, as well as for purification. Hollowed rotten logs made drums. Roots were carved into dolls for children and tourists. Aspen wood makes great bow drills.

Children used the fruit seeds for chewing gum. Everyone ate the inner bark raw, or pounded it into flour for cooked cakes or boiled it into noodles. (People in Europe and Asia ate the inner bark similarly. It’s said to be high in Vitamin C.) Aspen catkins were a spring food.

Its bark contains salicylates, from which is derived salicylic acid, used to make aspirin. Aspen is listed as helping with liver troubles, insect bites, dysentery, splints to help set broken bones and sprained ankles on human or horse. It has been used for heartburn, worm and wound medicine, gynecological and prostate troubles, syphilis, arthritis and rheumatism, coughs and colds. A tea prepared from branches was given to those with “insanity [brought on by] excessive drinking.”

Burns and wounds are still soothed by aspen salve made by slowly boiling the buds in oil. The wax coating on the buds produces the resin. Aspen Bark extract is sold commercially in the natural products business for cosmetic and personal care products such as sunscreen. The German Commission E Monographs, a well-known guide to herbal therapeutics, approved this aspen for hemorrhoids as well as burns and wounds. Western herbalists still use aspen for many of the same purposes Native Americans did and do.

Aspen is also a key provider of strong pulpwood that’s easy to work with, solid wood products, and oriented strand board. Aspen wood is not strong enough for dimensional lumber, but it’s tough and doesn’t splinter, so it’s used for playground equipment and sauna benches, barn floors and horse stalls, fence posts and siding, packing produce, shavings, air-conditioner filters, furniture padding, and pallets, paper, and other products. It was also used for mine shaft props. In some places, aspen is used in phytoremediation (cleaning up contaminated land).

Aspen is a vital home and pantry for black bear, deer, elk, hare, ruffed grouse, woodcock, and/or a number of smaller birds and animals. Aspen cambium is also ground up and fed to livestock. Aspen heals riversides and protects against soil erosion. It holds water in our soils and prevents runoff flooding downstream.

There has been concern that some aspen groves are dying. Certainly the aspen grove called “the largest organism on earth” is having a hard time. (An aspen grove is a single root colony with suckers that become stems). Nicknamed Pando, meaning “I spread” in Latin, it covers over 100 acres, weighs 13 million pounds, and is at least 40,000 trees.

This dieback, also happening to aspen groves elsewhere, is attributed to over-browsing by deer and other ungulates—i.e., not enough predators. Aspen is subject to fungi which cause rot under certain conditions, such as wet winters followed by summer droughts. And aspen needs fire or other disturbance to rejuvenate. It can’t grow in its own shade; it needs sunlight.

The more aware we are of its needs, the more we can make ecosystem-based management decisions that help this amazing powerhouse continue standing strong.