Shoots

Scots pine (young shoots)

Pinus sylvestris L. · pine shoots, Scotch pine · Polish: Sosna zwyczajna (młode pędy)

Edible

Photo: Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

How to identify it

Needles grey-green to blue-green, in pairs on short shoots, 3–7 cm long.
Young shoots in spring light green, flexible, covered with brown scales and sticky resin.
Bark at the base of the trunks of old trees grey-brown, thick, deeply furrowed.
Cones 3–7 cm long.

Where it grows

Grows on a variety of soils: sandy and clayey, and also on shale and granite bedrock.

In the kitchen and the home medicine cabinet

Pine shoot syrup — a product on Poland's list of traditional products (Pomeranian province, Tuchola Forest): shoots 5–10 cm long, picked in May, are layered with sugar and left for 7–14 days (other recipes: sugar and shoots 1:1, 3–4 weeks), then strained and kept somewhere cool. The shoots are not rinsed with water. Foresters advise picking shoots up to 10 cm long, only side shoots, never from the top of the tree, and not stripping any one young tree bare.

Caution The shoots are the tree's annual growth — picking them can permanently damage and deform a young pine, especially if the leading (top) shoot is taken. The Piaski forest district office (Nadleśnictwo Piaski; State Forests – Lasy Państwowe, 2025) states that gathering pine shoots in the State Forests without a permit is prohibited, and recommends picking them on your own plots and gardens; the Regional Directorate of State Forests (RDLP) in Białystok recommends picking only from self-sown trees in open ground and on wasteland, so as not to harm forest plantations. Forest plantations up to 4 m tall are under a permanent ban on entry (Forest Act (ustawa o lasach), art. 26 ust. 2 pkt 1), and the Forest Act prohibits destroying or damaging trees (art. 30 ust. 1 pkt 5). Anyone who cuts into or otherwise damages a tree in someone else's forest commits a petty offence (Code of Petty Offences (Kodeks wykroczeń), art. 153 § 1 pkt 1; a fine of up to 250 zł or a reprimand). Picking is prohibited in national parks and nature reserves. Before picking in a forest, ask at the forest district office (nadleśnictwo). The syrup contains a lot of sugar.