Non-timber Forest Products
Innovative and lucrative income streams can also be found by producing non-wood forest products, such as tapping trees to make maple syrup or harvesting marketable non-timber forest products like edible and medicinal species or decorative greens. These "other" forest products help forest owners generate additional income streams from their land and help to develop and sustain markets that help keep forests as forests.
Natural Resource Insight offers consultation, inventory, planning, and implementation for management of specialty forest products, bringing 20 years of experience in non-traditional forest markets.
Examples of non-timber forests products include:
Natural Resource Insight offers consultation, inventory, planning, and implementation for management of specialty forest products, bringing 20 years of experience in non-traditional forest markets.
Examples of non-timber forests products include:
- Forest botanicals used as seasonings and flavorings, such as bay leaves, Labrador tea, rose hips, thistle, and chicory
- Edible greens, roots, and tubers such as amaranth, bracken and other ferns, poke, cattail, burdock, elderberry, pigweed, milkweed, wild leek, garlic, sumac, sassafras, and wild yam
- Edible fungi
- Edible seeds and nuts such as walnut, hickory, hazelnuts, and pinenuts
- Forest pharmaceuticals such as American ginseng, goldenseal, black cohosh, blackhaw, borage, Echinacea, licorice, lobelia, mayapple, mullein, St. John's wort, bloodroot, wild ginger, slippery elm, white oak, and black cherry
- Resins and aromatic essential oils from Balsam fir, birch, cedar, hemlock, sassafras, spruce, and wintergreen
- Berries and wild fruit with commercial potential, including blackberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, blueberries, elderberry, black cherry, gooseberries, persimmon, serviceberries, and staghorn sumac
- Specialty honeys and pollen production from species such as tulip poplar and American basswood
- Maple sap
- Pine straw
- Cones, seeds, lichens, mosses, and greenery used for floral, wreath, and potpourri products
- Products for crafts such as basketweaving, birdhouses, bowls, and Shaker products