Alder - Plant Identification, Uses and Folklore

Hello there, welcome back. In this video we're going to be taking a look at the alder. Now, alder trees are particularly associated with growing next to lakes and streams and rivers and so on, generally in boggy areas, but they will grow in very, very dry areas also. They're actually kind of classed as a pioneer species in that they'll grow in really horrendous conditions. So you often see them growing out to the top of factory roofs and so on. You know, most of the plants just wouldn't be able to survive. These are real survivors. Now here's what I mean by a pioneer species. We've got a real expansive wasteland here. And most of the plants are alder. There is some willow, there is some grass, but even they are struggling. The alder just doesn't seem to mind. It's doing really, really well. Now in the very beginning of the year... They produce catkins, which turn into these hard little, almost like rabbit droppin' shaped things, or rat droppins. They're pretty much of no use. What is of use is something that comes along a little bit later. Here we've got the start of alder cones. Later on in the year, that's what they'll turn into. These are very, very useful. Now I'm actually going to harvest some of these old alder cones. Because they've got special properties which I'll explain a little bit later in the video. Now this illustrates the cone situation quite well. Here we've got the brand new ones which are still very green and here we've got the ones from last year which are brown and really really dried out. They're totally opened up as well so most of the seeds will have dropped out of there. Just a quick bit of ID. When the plant is fairly small, you know anything up to about 10 meters tall, the bark tends to be quite smooth. At least it has that appearance. It is actually a little bit knobbly. It's almost like birch bark. This one's kind of got a greeny tinge. But on the same plant, we've got one here which is almost grey with white spots on. So they do vary slightly, but it's generally smooth until the plant gets bigger. And I'll show you a mature tree in a Now the leaves of the alder are reminiscent of hazel. But they're not quite as pointed, and although they still have the sawtooth effect, they're generally more rounded and often bigger as well. It does vary from species to species, though. But, I mean, if you look at that, the end of that looks very much like hazel. It does tend to grow straighter than hazel, though. Hazel's more of a bush. Hazel's more rounded, whereas alder tends to grow up and then spread out. But when the trees are young and from a distance, it is pretty difficult to tell the difference between alder and hazel. Just a quick note on these little bags that I'm using to put the cones in. These are actually used for aquariums. You put aquarium filter media in them. These are very, very good when we're harvesting wild foods or things from outdoors that might be useful. They allow it to breathe and, although obviously they're not waterproof, they keep whatever is in here nice and dry because it doesn't sweat. An ordinary plastic bag, especially if these have any sort of moisture, would just sweat. Right here we've got a mature alder, and you can see this one's cut up a little bit. It's a little bit rougher, the bark on here, and as it gets bigger and bigger, it'll get rougher and rougher. It's still got pretty much the same colouration as the young plant, but it's definitely a rougher bark, and depending on what sort of a life it's had, it can grow very, very straight, like that one, or if it's been pummeled when it's been young, it can form almost like a hazel bush. Now alder hasn't got any uses as far as a food goes, as far as I can tell anyway, but as a pioneer species it does actually feed and nourish the soil. It fixes nitrogen, so when it grows root nodules fix nitrogen, make the ground around it really rich, and when the plant dies other plants can succeed. And you might think that might take hundreds and hundreds of years but The alder only lives 50 to 60 years, it pretty much just disintegrates after that. So it comes on really bad ground, nourishes the ground, makes it suitable for the next plants to come along, and it really, it's kind of like a primary producer as far as plants go. Now as far as the value to wildlife, the alder is pretty good for a lot of species of moths, and often in late summer you can get... The whole tree absolutely covered in like a almost looks like a white haze but it's actually the silk that's spun from these moths and that can look pretty special and it pretty much devastates the leaves but the plant does recover. Now because the alder gets catkins on in the beginning of the year it's often used by bees and other insects as a good early source of pollen. And because it gets the little cones on, which have seeds in them, it's also used by seed-eating birds as well in the back end of the year. Now because those little catkins are like the spring flowers of the tree, they were often harvested and they were crushed down and used as a green dye. So if you can imagine Robin Hood or little fairies or something creeping around in their green clothes, their green clothes would have most likely have been dyed using the alder tree. Now alder wood apparently makes very good charcoal and it was used back in the day for making gunpowder and because it's very resilient to rot and water damage, it was often used to build small boats and also platforms that would be in the water. As far as commercial uses go, it hasn't really got that many commercial uses, but it is used in plywood manufacture, things that are basically just poked down from a variety of different trees. Now, just going back to the point I made before about Alder being very good in watery situations, apparently much of Venice is held up by posts made from Alder, because it lasts a long time. As far as kind of bushcraft and survival goes, it's these cones that are the most useful thing. And, although I did discover that the cones were used in some sort of rituals back in the day, as far as, like, witchcraft goes, there was nothing too outlandish there to report. It's all quite mundane stuff. Basically, what this is, is a antifungal and antibacterial tea bag. And that might sound totally strange, and we're not going to drink the tea that comes off here, but when this goes in hot water, it releases quite a powerful dye. There's a lot of tannins, there's a lot of acids in there. And they have really, really good anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. And I learned that from actually having a fish shop which sold tropical fish. There's a lot of the South American and Asian species of fish rely on the water being quite low pH and when they're spawning the eggs need to be protected from fungus and bacteria. And instead of adding chemicals we can actually add extract from the cones from all the trees. And I'll show you what that looks like now. It's quite phenomenal just how much goodness comes out of here. Okay, we're back home and we're going to use our little tea bag full of alder cones. There's probably about 30 cones in there maybe. And this is a one litre jug, which is about a pint and a half. So we're just going to fill that up with boiling water. And you can see the colour changing already. There you go, that's about a litre. I'm going to leave that for 15 minutes and I'm going to do a time-lapse on it. So, in essence, I'm going to speed it up, see how dark the water goes in 15 minutes. Okay, that's the 15-minute mark. And you can see that is, yeah, it just looks like strong tea. It's got almost like a reddish tinge to it. It's a beautiful colour, actually. And that is a really, really good antibacterial and antiseptic. So you can wash your hands in there, you can wash your utensils in there. You can sterilise any sort of kit you might be using as emergency medical kit. Really, really useful stuff. Very, very good. Actually, one thing that I've thought of doing with this but never actually tried is soaking my feet in it. If you ever get any sort of like fungal problems with your nails or between your toes, like athlete's foot or anything like that, I would imagine that this would cure it. At least I would like to think so. I've never had those sort of ailments so I've never tried it, but I could see it working. I could see that being a good natural remedy. Really as far as fish keeping goes, you would just tip this into your tank. That would help to lower the pH, soften the water and give antibacterial and antifungal properties. So it'll stop your fish getting damaged, it'll heal any damage the fish have got. If you just leave the alder cones hanging in the side of your tank, they'll continue to release this for about three or four weeks. Therefore, these are a really good, free, long-term solution for low pH fish, and also for breeders as well. And now you know how to recognise the plants, you're free to go out and get them. Just two more things to say about alder. One is that it was apparently used for clog manufacturing, because it didn't aggravate people's feet and it allowed them to walk long distances in clogs. And that probably relates to the antifungal and antibacterial properties of whatever is in the wood and in the cones. And the other thing is... If you've got alder that's particularly grown near a source of water and you cut one of the limbs off, it produces a very, very orangey sort of almost blood-like sap which is very, very unusual to look at. Now if, like me, plant knowledge isn't one of your fortes, you might want to check out the links in the video description. I've put links to a few books and also Wikipedia. So if you're interested in learning more about any of the plants featured in these different videos that I've got in this particular series, check out the video description. Just click show more and the full video description will come up. So there you go, if you're out in the bush and you cut yourself, just make up your little anti-fungal and antibacterial mixture from from the cones or even the wood or the bark of mature trees, apply that and it's going to heal up a hell of a lot faster than it would without anything on there. It's very, very useful for that one purpose, if nothing else. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this video. It didn't have as many different uses as a lot of the other plants that I'm going to be covering in this series, but... For what it is, I think alder is a very, very interesting plant and if nothing else, for that antifungal and antibacterial properties, it makes it an interesting one to know. Thanks for watching, check out the other videos in the series and also go onto my channel, check out the various playlists, there's hundreds of videos on there, most of them are outdoor related. Thanks very much for watching, see you next time.