There are certain tree barks that can be eaten and I can't remember which ones that you can?

Question

eat. Can you tell me please?

Answer 1

There are a few.

Cinnamon is a bark used for spice, and so is sumac bark..

Poplar and pine bark (inside layer) can be used as emergency food. So can basswood.

These are edible too; sweet (black) birch, spruce, hemlock tree and slippery elm.

Note that I said edible and not tasty. Poplars and willows are bitter, pines taste like turpentine.

Slippery elm is about the best tasting and it is really slimy.

Answer 2

In the trunk of a large tree the only living part is some layers of live cells outside the wood proper and inside the bark-called the sapwood, the cambium, and the inner bark. All these layers put together may be only a fraction of an inch thick.

The living layers of cambium and inner bark on many kinds of trees have often been used in medicine, in home remedies, and even as a source of food. In 1732, when Linnaeus, the father of modern botany, was tramping through the Lapland, he reported that the Lapps were largely subsisting on "fir bark." This was from the tree known to us as Scotch pine.

The Lapps removed the brown outer layer and hung the strips of white inner bark under the eaves of their barns to dry. If food was plentiful the next winter, this bark was fed to their dogs and cattle, and was reported to be very fattening, but if other foods were scarce, the Lapps would grind this dried bark and make a famine bread of it, which was very nutritious, but, to Linnaeus's taste, not very palatable.

It is not usually realized how much the American Indians formerly depended on tree barks for food. The eastern Indians favored the barks from the pine family, especially that from the white pine, although the inner barks of other trees, such as black birch and slippery elm, were relished.