Slippery elm

Ulmus rubra

Ulmaceae

The mucilaginous inner bark of an American elm — a slippery tea for a raw throat and a raw gut.

Inner-bark soothe from cultivated or ethically sourced trees. Wild stands have been hit by harvest and by Dutch elm disease — do not strip a roadside elm.

Parts used: Inner bark (powder)
Traditional notes: Raw dry cough · Sore throat · Gastric irritation · A bland recovery food
Grow · USDA 6b: Tree, USDA 3–9 A nursery U. rubra. You are planting for a decade, not a tin. In work: Mar · Apr · May
Harvest: Do not strip wild trees. Buy cultivated inner bark. A home tree is a specimen, not a mill.

Plant it for the century. Buy the powder for the cupboard.
Dutch elm disease still exists. Diversity in the planting matters.
Mix powder with cold water first or it clumps into paste.

Safety

Wild-stripped bark Obstruction if you eat it dry by the spoon

Lore

Indigenous nations of the east used the inner bark as food and as a wound poultice; settlers wrote it into every domestic book as ‘elm food’ for invalids. The 19th-century Eclectics put it on almost every raw surface. Dutch elm disease later made the standing tree rarer than the lozenge aisle, which is the wrong way around.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.