Forests contain a variety of native and introduced plants that people have long used to meet basic needs, and communities developed by sharing knowledge about them. In northern Michigan, the Anishnaabek—Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi—continue to use many local species in traditional ways for food, dyes, medicines, fibers, resins, and more. Sweetfern grows in well-drained sunny areas from Nova Scotia to the Southern Appalachia, and its leaves are used for medicine, fragrance, tea, and for lining and covering blueberry pails to keep berries fresh. Serviceberry, a deciduous shrub in the rose family, quickly regrows after forest fires, and its edible fruits were an important subsistence food for Indigenous people across what is now North America. Sugar maple was first tapped by the Anishnaabek for its sap, and after winter sugar camps were and still are places where people gather to process sap into syrup and sugar; Michigan has historically ranked among the top six states in maple syrup production and produced 150,000 gallons in 2021. White pine, declared Michigan's state tree in 1955, has provided the Anishnaabek with medicine, building material, and resin for wound care and sealing canoe seams, and it drove Michigan's logging era from 1870 to 1900 while still being harvested for lumber today. Jack pine roots provided cord for sewing canoes and lashing heavy objects, its boughs covered floors and softened beds for Anishnaabek and settlers alike, and the tree is critical to the survival of the rare Kirtland's warbler in northern Michigan. An 1893 drawing by a student at Holy Childhood Indian Boarding School showed making maple sugar with family at sugar camp, and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, born in 1880 at Sault Ste. Marie and known by her Ojibwe name Bamewawagezhikaquay, became one of the first American Indian literary writers, though her poems and translations were most often published without attribution by her husband Henry Row Schoolcraft.