Does anyone have any direct
experience with it? I just learned of it from a California foraging book and now I'm
very interested in trying some - in fact I'll be walking my woods hoping to see some this evening but my hopes aren't high.
A quick bit of googling doesn't return much recent info at all, but I did find one guy that said he managed to collect some here:
"This tree provided
native peoples with a singular confection which was still made at least into the 1920s, & was known as "Douglas-fir sugar." The sugar was harvested from young branch-tips where it accumulated in the sunniest locations in the form of frost-like grains. These consist by of by weight 50% melezitose, which is a trisaccharide sugar. Our tree produces this frosty sugar each summer. I once took a half-teaspoon & dashed in into my mouth & can't say I found the flavor praiseworthy, but a people without cane or maple sugar handy for comparison would surely love it." - quoted from
here
A couple of old articles mentioning Douglas Fir sugar or Douglas Fir manna as I'm going to call it from now on:
American Forestry article
Scientific American article
"Instead of Pay It Forward I prefer Plant It Forward" ~Howard Story / "God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools." ~John Muir
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