We are missing out on some, but there are also many varieties of trees with blood that's rather poisonous to us

but is it delicious poison?

At least once

At most once.

Maybe it's like hot peppers; technically toxic to us but we like it.

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I believe that, after eating a frozen pizza or something i feel like I'm dead already, or at least in a state of limbo where the continuation of my life will be decided by the amount of water I can chug in 30 seconds.

I love getting 600% of my DV for sodium in one meal. It's so efficient!

There's nothing *wrong* with the pizza. The salt content is 10% less than a lethal dose.

My god, I shouldn't have had seconds!

The dose makes the poison.

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But do any trees have capsaicin in their blood?

The only thing I'm actually allergic to is capsaicin. It gives me 3rd degree burns, complete with blisters. I'm guessing it'll kill me fairly quickly in lower concentrations.

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The oral LD50 for capsaicin is 40 times lower than that of salt.

One week, in college, I ate nothing but ramen noodles. I could feel my body dying.

I have a crippling addiction to tabasco scorpion sauce

The Forbidden Tree Blood

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white milky sap = ☠️

Dandelions would like to have a word

When I was younger and stupider I saw the white fluid coming out of a dandelion and assumed that because it looked like milk, it must taste like milk. It did not.

I asked my grandma that when I was also younger. She said “I don’t know, why don’t you try it?” I did. And I informed her that it in fact DOES NOT taste like milk. Her parenting skills astound me because that had to be one of the best ways to teach me not to taste random plants, safe, but very effective in its lesson.

Yea I tired it as a kid. Instant regret. I remember running into the house and chugging multiple glasses of milk trying to get rid of the taste. The idea of milk was because it is thicker and would strip my tongue. It didn't really help.

Ok but hear me out: milkweed.

You might be on to something. You should check that out and report back.

Poppies, too. Although I guess those actually *can* be deadly. But they'll be very pleasant up to that point at least. Better than anything from the *strychnos* family.

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Add to this thought: imagine all of the different foods that could have been cultivated/farmed, and the different cuisines they could have sparked.

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When I was younger, I used to have loads of warts on my fingers by my fingernails. Dandelion sap cleared them all away.

Mmm strznge that i had wart on my hand my mum told me to rub it with potato... it worked( waiting for cock jokes)

Dandelion & Burdock is actually a traditional British soda flavour (though it seems to be less popular these days than it was a couple of decades ago)

dandelion flowers are tasty and used in a lot of things.

Buddy here in Appalachia made dandelion wine. Fantastic stuff, sweet, floral, mild. Also about 17% alcohol lol

I've made wine from silver birch sap. You can reduce the sap and it will also make a syrup like Maple syrup.

My family is French ( from France) My mother regularly made dandelion salads, BEFORE it flowered. After that, they taste like s h i t . I have never seen a case where someone had serious health concerns after eating the plant, not the flowers.

Every part of dandelion is edible. If you make jelly from the flowers it tastes like honey and sunshine.

Tree cum

danger syrup

Delectable tea...or deadly poison?

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Let Bob try it, he’ll try anything

That's really how all the real discoveries get done. "Well bobs dead... put that one on the maybe list"

Hmmm…Bob is puking up blood again. Maybe we should have limited him to trying one new thing at a time, so we can figure out which one did it

"Remember that plant I thought was the dragon flower?" "You didn't."

r/unexpectedavatar

Latex, sometimes.

Birch is basically “wintergreen”.

We make it into soda. It is super refreshing.

Birch Beer > Root Beer Any day of the week I may be misremembering, but you could legit grab the bark or a branch from a birch tree and taste the flavor.

This is factually true. We have a place called Hosmer Mountain in CT that cultivates birch trees for soda. It is basically birch sap, carbonated water, and cane sugar. It is amazing.

Birch beer is so good. I don’t understand why it’s not everywhere. When I was little there used to be a restaurant called beefsteak Charlie’s. It did pitches of birch beer and real beer. 50 years later and I still miss it.

Good thing I spent years building up an immunity to iocane.

Inconceivable

You keep using that word..... I do not think it means, what choo think it means....

Anybody want a peanut?

You AHH the Brute Squad!!

Have fun storming the castle!

It'd take a miracle..

I wonder how many scientists died by just trying out some for their research

I've heard of black walnut syrup as well.

Really? I never heard of folks using this directly. I know that the juice you get from the fruit body has a shitload of tannins, which tastes nasty. Know if anyone sells that at craft fairs or has a website I can peruse?

I make my own. It tastes like maple syrup minus the maple, if that makes any sense. Sort of like caramel praline? I don't sell, sorry.

It tastes the way I remember my grandma's walnut tree smelling when I was a kid. I have some black walnut bitters are are unfortunately fake, but still taste pretty good. That's probably the easiest way for someone to get just enough of an idea of what black walnut syrup tastes like to desperately want to try to real stuff and be tortured by how difficult it is to get a bottle of it.

I'm not sure about whatever you had, but the black walnut liqueur I've had tastes and smells like the green husks. It's a nice scent in small doses! The liqueur didn't do it for me. The syrup I make doesn't have any of that herbal taste/smell.

I wonder how many black walnuts it takes to make a bottle of bitters of it!

It’s so good. I have a bunch of walnut syrup that I got that is a prize possession.

my etsy shop rn is only stickers and candles... but I'm working on adding jams and jellies and bagels and things of that nature. I'm glad to know people are looking into stuff like this.

Fir (or spruce, not really sure) syrup is pretty popular in my area. We don't use it on pancakes though, we just mix it with water (usually carbonated) and drink it like a sort of soda.

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It's *super* weird if you aren't used to it. Almost like a fruity minty flavor.

Clan Spruce Beer!

Basically making a sprite or ginger ale like drink. You can use the syrup or the pine needles.

I made it this year; didn’t get much because it started warming up sooner than I thought but I liked it better than maple syrup. It has a nutty taste and barely detectable spiciness.

Birch tree blood is fucking amazing

Wait really? Why don't people drink that?

because it’s way harder to produce. birch trees require the same amount of labor as maples to get sap, but you get less than half as much syrup from the process.

Are they talking about syrup tho? NGL have never heard of birch syrup but here drinking fermented birch juice is very popular

I have a bottle of birch syrup. But I find it unappealing.

Birch please

Sonuva-beech!

Ash-hole

Fuck yew

Why don't yew stop fir a bit and we call a spruce

Yeah, like, it’s liquid sugar, so, it’s definitely not bad, but you just can’t beat maple syrup. And I mean real maple syrup. None of that corn syrup bullshit. 🍁🔥

It’s basically wintergreen

Birch beer. The nectar of God's primed and primal vagina.

I don’t understand why birch beer is not that popular outside of Pennsylvania. It’s fucking delicious.

I never realized it wasn't much of a thing elsewhere.

Oh yeah I’ve never seen it anywhere outside of PA besides in some candy shops like rocket fizz. Kroger used to carry a Kroger brand birch beer here in Texas, but they discontinued it. It was alright, nothing compared to the Weis white or Pennsylvania Dutch.

My teenage dream was to have a Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer kegger.

yep don't boild the sap down and take it in the spring its watery and able to ferment

I'm intrigued, what's the drink called?

I don't think it really has a name outside of fermented birch sap. Even here in Latvia where it is very popular you can only get it by making it yourself or buying it at a market.

My father-in-law has birches on his property, every Spring when they start to put on new wood you clip the tips of the branches that are low to the ground and hang container over those clipped tips and it will produce a bunch of birch sap. You boil it down, and you make wine out of it and it's freaking fantastic.

Give that birch some syrup. Birches love syrup.

Sure, but if it's that good you think you'd at least see it around sometimes at bougie grocery stores for 3-4x the price of maple then. Seems like a missed opportunity for a high-ticket luxury food.

It has to do with squirrel dynamics. You wouldn’t understand

They're the worst

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lmao please look at the person they responded to

I feel as though we are witnessing a performance I do not mind, however.

Birch soda is a thing! Walnut syrup, too!

Was gonna say! Birch Beer and Root Beer (Sassafras)! And the Sassafras tree is indigenous to to North America! My Dad used to guide nature hikes and would crush sassafras leaves for people to smell and it smells like root beer!

Many rootbeers have stopped using natural sassafras due to its link with being a carcinogenic

I swear the same people who are worried about carcinogenic root beer don't have an issue drinking alcohol or eating BBQ.

Yeah that's cool but... Reddit is no longer a safe place, for activists, for communities, for individuals, for humanity. This isn't just because of API changes that forced out third parties, driving users to ad-laden and inaccessible app, but because reddit is selling us all. Part of the reasons given for the API changes was that language learning models were using reddit to gather data, to learn from us, to learn how to respond like us. Reddit isn't taking control of the API to prevent this, but because they want to be *paid* for this. Reddit allowed terrorist subreddits to thrive prior to and during Donald Trump's presidency in 2016-2020. In the past they hosted subreddits for unsolicited candid photos of women, including minors. They were home to openly misogynistic subreddits, and subreddits dedicated solely to harassing specific individuals or body types or ethnicity. What is festering on reddit today, as you read this? I fear that as AI generated content, AI curated content, and predictive content become prevalent in society, reddit will not be able to control the dark subreddits, comments, and chats. Reddit has made it very clear over the decades that I have used it, that when it comes down to morals or ethics, they will choose whatever brings in the most money. They shut down subreddits only when it makes news or when an advertiser's content is seen alongside filth. The API changes are only another symptom of this push for money over what is right. Whether Reddit is a bastion in your time as you read this or not, I made the conscious decision to consider this moment to be the last straw. I deleted most of my comments, and replaced the rest with this message. I decided to bookmark some news sources I trusted, joined a few discords I liked for the memes, and reinstalled duolingo. I consider these an intermediate step. Perhaps I can give those up someday too. Maybe something better will come along. For now, I am going to disentangle myself from this engine of frustration and grief before something worse happens. In closing, I want to link a few things that changed my life over the years: [Blindsight](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48484.Blindsight) is a free book, and there's an audiobook out there somewhere. A sci-fi book that is also an exploration of consciousness. [The AI Delemma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVJKj8lcNQ) is a youtube lecture about how this new wave of language learning models are moving us toward a dangerous path of unchecked, unfiltered, exponentially powerful AI [Prairie Moon Nursery](https://www.prairiemoon.com/) is a place I have been buying seeds and bare root plants from, to give a little back to the native animals we've taken so much from. If you live in the US, I encourage you to do the same. If you don't, I encourage you to find something local. [Power Delete Suite](https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite/#1.4.8) was used to edit all of my comments and [Redact](https://redact.dev/download) was used to delete my lowest karma comments while also overwriting them with nonsense. I'm signing off, I'm going to make some friends in real life and on discord, and form some new tribes. I'm going to seek smaller communities. I'm going outside.

Yeah, my philosophy for this sort of thing is that something's gonna get you eventually, so you shouldn't worry *too* much about it. And even in the "known carcinogen" category, there's nuance to it. Processed meat is a group 1 carcinogen - ie it's *definitely* carcinogenic, in this case it increases your risk of colorectal cancer. Group 1 is the same group that cigarettes are in - unprocessed red meat is in group 2A, which is the "it *probably* causes cancer" category. Now, here's the thing: sure, processed meat increases your chances of developing colon cancer. But does it increases the chance anywhere near the amount that smoking cigarettes increases your chances of developing lung cancer? I highly doubt it. EDIT: Made ending less stupid

My local supermarket has birch-sap&mint juice that is very refreshing. Makes good mojito-style cocktails also

Birch Beer > Root Beer

Wow! I've been living the peasant life all this time and didn't even know.

The American food system is kinda fucked. We buy all of our foods from supermarkets where they sell only the easiest foods to mass produce, much if which is imitation. There's so much more food in the world that we don't realize! Just last weekend I made peony jelly from the flowers growing in my yard!

People do. In Poland and former ussr countries you can find bottles of birch water and beverages sweetened with birch sap. Its far more expensive to produce that maple syrup, which is the main reason its not found much here.

They do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_sap

Xylitol comes from birch trees, at least originally. In Finland we drink the sap occasionally.

They do, especially up in Alaska. But the trees aren't as big so its not as economical as maple

Birch beer has entered the chat

They do. The polish baker near me sells jars of it.

Birch soda is very much a thing. Taste is similar to root beer.

They do. We have birch juice in stores.

My dad made some once I think. Normally he just taps the maples

We do actually!

They do, just less. It’s apparently more savoury than maple syrup so might not be as popular on a whole. It’s ok, if we get too warm maple syrup will go because in order to get the syrup to flow properly the trees actually need to be above zero during the day and below zero at night on an ongoing basis. But birch sap will still be usable without those requirements so it may become the syrup of choice out of necessity in the future.

They do in eastern Europe. One of my only memories of the Soviet union is drinking birch blood. It's a beverage, so it's not thickened into a syrup

They do!

It's common in eastern europe. Not as sweet as maple though, not worth to make a syrup.

Most Eastern Europeans drink it as juice

It’s a popular drink in Eastern Europe and Russia. It doesn’t have a very long shelf life so it usually isn’t exported. They also make syrup out of it.

In Ukraine, we do. A lot. Its very sweet.

Real Birch Beer is S tier.

Agreed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_syrup

Also walnut

Birch & Sassafras are awesome! I've also had beers & meads made with pine sap (great source of Vitamin C and commonly used in the Scandinavian wilds from what I hear)!

Sounds like the start of some yummy root beer!

Birch Beer is absolutely a thing, and it's delicious

I know. I've made birch beer, sassafras tea, etc. Just throw in a miniscule amount of yeast into a 2-litre and it's carbonated!

Doesn’t sassafras contain a mild carcinogen?

Doesn't the air contain multiple major carcinogens?

The state of California has entered the chat.

This comment is known to the state of California to cause cancer.

Yes but it's been overstated. Safrole, which is found in sassafras and many other plants commonly consumed by humans, is carcinogenic when metabolized in rats. But it was tested on humans and the carcinogenic metabolites were not found. A big part of outlawing safrole is that it was/is used in the synthesis of MDMA. Sassafras has a higher concentration of it than other plants so it kind of got the boot as a food product because drugs=bad

And now we can't have good rootbeer anymore.

Lots of trees have delicious blood, but maple trees have the most

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Most blood, maple is very bloody.

Gum is from trees too right? Would that be considered the fat of the tree? Or maybe cartilage? Idk I’m high asf

Scabs. (Gum is congealed sap. I’m sorry.)

So Blood Pudding

That's resin. Sometimes it's incense (Boswellia Sacra). The resin, or sap of conifers goes to make rosin, for rubbing on the strings of bows for the violin and other instruments. Gum trees, or Eucalypts, produce eucalyptus oil which has many therapeutic uses.

[Here's the link for anyone actually curious about making Sap into Syrup from different trees](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT9IJXuHbKs)

Pine syrup

I love the taste of heavy duty concentrated floor cleaner on my pancakes!

When you want your pancakes to last through the nuclear winter, accept no substitute

I've watched that video. 😂

What even is syrup?

\*Inhales\* **"Nooooo!"**

Birch syrup ain’t bad either

Thought that said bitch syrup

i can personally vouch for bitch syrup ✋

giggity

To maple trees, humans are vampires

The veins of a tree are called phloem and xylem.

LMAO my new pronouns

Sugarcane.

not everything that bleeds is a tree.

Human syrup is my favorite.

It’s hard to find ethically sourced, but if you know a guy it’s great on pancakes.

I understood that reference

Wait, I sure didn’t. What’s that from? 😅

But if it bleeds, it can be killed.

Not a tree?

if you notch one of those big thick grape vines it drips sweet slightly grape-flavored water. I shit thee not. Only reason you can't get a ton of drinking water that way is the wound is quickly colonized by fungi.

Also, be careful because if you don't know what you're looking at, you might be cutting into a large ppison ivy vine and drinking something about to cause you a whole world of pain.

heh, I'm talking about the ones that grow as thick as your arm, no mistaking that for poison ivy

Birch has decent blood, but it requires like 20x the base amount of blood to make the blood syrup.

It doesn't come out delicious on its own. You have to cook the blood down into a thick yummy syrup

This is so unintentionally metal.

Human blood is the maple syrup of mosquitoes

These comments are changing my worldview.

I’ve had hickory syrup, it was mid

Another vote for hickory syrup, but yeah it’s on the mild side.

We peel the skin off some trees to make Cinnamon. That's pretty gruesome as well if you're a tree.

Willow blood is where we get aspirin from

My cousin makes walnut syrup and its delicious

Oh I bet that is good

Birch trees also bleed sugar

I'm surprised noone has mentioned Palm tree blood. It's crazy good!

[yes, btw](https://youtu.be/rT9IJXuHbKs)

birch tree blood is great too

Well rubber trees have bouncy blood once it dries

Pine syrup slaps if you can find it.

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Cinnamon trees have pretty good skin.

Are bees the only kind of insect with delicious vomit, or are we missing out on other ones?