A Historical Perspective on Pine Pollen

Plants, History, Ecology

Some of the beauty in studying and using Chinese herbs is the deep connection these traditions have both in history and in ecology. There is just no separating, no bifurcating these medicinal herbs and the history and natural environment which they are borne out of--it is more than context, it is almost part of the DNA. 

Pine Pollen, while not the most common herb of today's Chinese medicine practitioners, is no exception to these historical and ecological threads which knit the tapestry of Chinese medicinal herbs.

Pine Pollen has a rich history of use throughout China, Japan, and Korea--some even call Pine Pollen an "Ancient Chinese Secret." While that may be a slight hyperbole, there are citations of Pine Pollen in Chinese medical texts dating back 1500+ years. We want to explore these citations with you.

Because Pine Pollen is just beginning to increase in popularity in the West, there is not a lot of information on it available in English, in the West. We are proud that the majority of the information available on Pine Pollen comes from us and we want to bring you more of it.

In an effort to continually bring our customers and website visitors new, quality information, we have begun a small translation project, translating some of the early, historical references of Pine Pollen from their Chinese, Japanese, and Korean sources, into English. We've done this with the help of a colleague that is both a native Chinese speaker and a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) student. We are in deep gratitude for his help.

As part of our Knowledge Base, we have created a page dedicated to mapping the historical (and some not so historical) Pine Pollen references, and translated and contextualized these references as much as possible. You can find the complete write up here, Pine Pollen: A Historical Perspective. Take a journey and read through it.

We hope you find this as interesting, information, and fun as we did. If you have any feedback, please let us know.