Ponderosa Pine, Pinus ponderosa P.& C.Lawson.  Named after Ben Cartwright's ranch?  Go ask "Little Joe" or "Hoss".

Native American Food Uses:  Numerous tribes ate the seeds, raw or roasted.  Seeds typically dried in the sun after being removed from the cone.  Thompson pounded seeds in skin bag, then mixed them with water.  Eaten boiled or raw.  Numerous tribes used the dried or semi dried pitch as chewing gum.  Cambium layer under the bark of trunk, limbs, twigs eaten.  Green end buds are eaten. New cones eaten while tender.  Powdered nuts put in baked goods or cooked by themselves into cakes.  Bark was scraped with sharp deer bones to cause oozing of sap.  Sap eaten. Northwestern tribes ate nuts with salmon.

OTHER USES: Roots of blue color used to make dye.  Needles and root fibers used to make baskets.  Wood used to make shelters.  Large logs used to make canoes, single log dug out or burned out to make punt.  Trunks used as lodge poles. Also, to make furniture and fence posts.  (More)
Medicine:  Pitch and gum used to treat many dermatological problems.  Gum used as base for salves, or as a salve itself.  Often mixed with lard (animal fat) to make ointment to treat arthritis, rheumatism.  Boils and carbuncles treated with pitch application.  Poultice of softened dried pitch over boils.  Gum also warmed and put in ear to treat otitis.  Gum mixed with deer fat and placed on skin problems of domestic animals.  Gum considered a sedative, used on the skin of babies to calm them and induce sleep--placed around crotch and buttocks to prevent chaffing.

Needles stabbed into hair and scalp to tread dandruff.  Needles eaten as an emetic by Ramah Navajo. Needle decoction also used as a febrifuge...Or to stop chronic coughing.

Cones and pollen used in ceremonial medicine by Navajo and Ramah Navajo. Plant tops decocted to treat hemorrhaging and to reduce fevers.

Okanagan-Colville:  Used green ends, buds, new growth claimed to be an abortifacient.  Not to be used during pregnancy, may be uterine stimulant.  Buds also used in decoction to treat eyes. 

The needles used as a sweat lodge warrior plant, placed on hot rocks, aromatic.

Cosmetic:  Decoction of new growth tops used in decoction as a wash for soft, smooth skin.

 
Three needles of Ponderosa Pine.