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 | Pine Other Names:
Botanical Name:
Family: N.O. Pinaceae |
Description: |
Pines are among the most important commercial trees. Most of them have straight, unbranched, cylindrical trunks, which furnish large amounts of excellent saw timber. On account of the straight grain, strength, and other qualities of pine timber, it is used for nearly every sort of constructional work and the trade in it is enormous.
All the Pines yield resin in greater or smaller quantities, which is obtained by tapping the trees. The crude resin is almost entirely used for the distillation of Oil of Turpentine and Rosin, only small quantities being employed medicinally - for ointments, plasters, etc. When the Oil of Turpentine is entirely distilled off, the residuum is Rosin or Colophony, but when only part of the oil is extracted, the viscous mass remaining is known commercially as common Crude Turpentine.
Oil of Turpentine is a good solvent for many resins, wax, fats, caoutchouc, sulphur, and phosphorus, and is largely employed in making varnish, in oil-painting, etc. Medicinally, it is much employed in both general and veterinary practice as a rubefacient and vesicant, and is valuable as an antiseptic. It is used for horses and cattle internally as a vermifuge, and externally as a stimulant for rheumatic swellings, and for sprains and bruises, and to kill parasites.
Rosin is used not only by violinists, for rubbing their bows, but also in making sealing wax, varnish, and resinous soaps for sizing paper and papier maché and dressing hemp cordage, but one of its special uses is for making brewer's pitch for coating the insides of beer casks and for distilling resinous oils, when the pitch used by shoemakers is left as residuum. Pitch is also used in veterinary practice.
Pinus Picea
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Tar is an impure turpentine, viscid and brown-black in colour, procured by destructive distillation from the roots of various coniferous trees, particularly from Pinus sylvestris. Tar is used medicinally, especially in veterinary practice, for its antiseptic, stimulant, diuretic and diaphoretic action. Tar-water is given to horses with chronic cough and used internally and externally as a cutaneous stimulant and antiseptic in eczema. Oil of Tar is used instead of Oil of Turpentine in the case of mange, etc.
A considerable industry has grown up in the United States in the distillation of Pine wood by means of steam under pressure. One of the products thus obtained, which has considerable commercial importance, is known as Pine Oil. It has a pleasant odour, resembling that of caraway or Juniper Oil, and has been largely used for making paints which dry without gloss and as a 'flatting' material. It flows well under the brush and is a powerful solvent, and is useful for emulsion paints such as are now employed for inside work.
Pine resins are largely employed by the soap-maker for the manufacture of brown soaps.
The trade in resins was for many years almost exclusively a French industry, and only in France were the Pine forests turned to account for the production of resin on a commercial scale. Now, however, Switzerland, Sweden, Russia and North America furnish quantities, though, from the point of view of quality, the Pines which flourish near Bordeaux furnish a resin still much in request, and the turpentine extracted therefrom is abundant and one of the best qualities produced.
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Medicinal Usage: |
Rubefacient, diuretic, irritant. A valuable remedy in bladder, kidney, and rheumatic affections and diseases of the mucous membrane and respiratory complaints; externally in the form of liniment plasters and inhalants.
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Ancient Lore: |
PINE TREE PINUS SYLVESTRIS
The kernels are excellent restoratives.
This is the Scots Pine or Norway Pine. It has reddish bark, greyish leaves like needles and sharp-pointed cones. Male flowers are orange-yellow, female flowers pinkish-green.
Where to find it: It grows throughout Europe, but is planted in parks and large gardens as an ornamental tree.
Flowering time: Late spring to early summer.
Astrology: It is a tree of Mars.
Medicinal virtues: From it comes common turpentine, which is thick, whitish and opaque. And from this, the distilled oil sometimes called spirit of turpentine is extracted. The substance left at the bottom of the still is the common rosin, which if taken out before it is drawn too high and then washed in water, is called white or yellow rosin. The black rosin is more evaporated and not washed, but both are of the same nature and are used in ointments and plasters. In consumptions and after a long illness, the kernels are used as a restorative. They are given in an emulsion beaten up with Barley-water. This is also good for the heat of the urine and other disorders of the urinary passages.
Modern uses: The Pine tree yields several important medicinal compounds. Stockholm tar is the thick, dark, oily substance obtained by distillation of the resin. The turpentine is also called terebenthine from which 01. Terebenthine is extracted. The tar is antiseptic and expectorant and given for chronic bronchial coughs and consumption. The oil is used in liniments or ointments for sciatica and skin diseases, such as eczema and psoriasis. Syrup of tar is tar water - made by shaking one part of tar with ten of water and decanting - with sugar added. It is taken in doses of one or two teaspoonfuls as an expectorant. See also Fir. |
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