Bear root
Ligusticum porteri
Also called Osha, Bear medicine, Porter’s lovage
- Cree
- minwék
Know another name for this plant, or a different spelling? Tell us.
A mountain root with a spicy celery smell, named for the bears that dig it when they come out of hibernation weak. Named in the Blackfeet and Nakoda blends, and one of the most respected roots on the plains. It belongs to the carrot family, which is why this one is learned in person.
Learn and harvest this one only alongside a knowledge keeper.
Take care
- Do not dig any carrot-family root unless you can positively identify and rule out water hemlock and poison hemlock.
- Not taken in pregnancy.
- Slow to recover from digging, and already under pressure from commercial harvest.
What it is confused with
Deadly look-alikeWater hemlock Cicuta maculata
Water hemlock grows in wet ground, has a hollow purple-streaked stem, coarse toothed leaflets with veins ending in the notches between teeth, and a chambered root that weeps yellow oily sap. It is the most violently poisonous plant on this prairie and it is in the same family. If you are digging a carrot-family root and you cannot rule this out, stop.
Deadly look-alikePoison hemlock Conium maculatum
Hairless stem blotched with purple, hollow between the joints, and a rank mousy smell rather than a spicy one. Bear root smells like celery. Poison hemlock smells wrong.
How to know it
- Smell
- Strongly spicy, like celery or lovage. This is the test that matters, and it is the test that separates it from the plants that will kill you.
- Leaves
- Fern-like and divided, parsley-family, on a stout stalk.
- Flowers
- Small white flowers in an umbrella-shaped cluster, like every other carrot-family plant, which is exactly the problem.
- Root
- Dark, fibrous, hairy at the crown, and spicy when scratched.
- Where
- Moist mountain forests and meadows in spruce and fir country, not out on the open prairie.
The country it grows in
- Mountain forest
- Foothills and shrubland
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Roots August to OctoberFrom mature flowering plants only, after the leaves begin to yellow. The Montana guide says afternoon, and says to lift the root with a fork rather than slicing it.
Right now it is July. Nothing on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Breathing and colds
- Stomach and digestion
- Smudge and ceremony
Recorded in the Montana guide as an immune support used for coughs, colds, bronchitis, sore throats and indigestion.
Named in the Blackfeet, Chippewa-Cree and Nakoda blends.
We are not putting this online
This entry withholds dosing. This is a carrot-family root, and the carrot family contains the two plants most likely to kill someone in this country. Amounts and identification are taught in person.
Where to ask instead: Ask at a Birchbark medicine session, or speak with a knowledge keeper in your own community.
How it is prepared
- Simmered
Dried root covered with water, boiled, simmered about twenty minutes, then strained.
Small amounts. And only once somebody who knows the plant has confirmed what you dug.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.
This is a root harvest, so you are taking the whole plant. Take only from a large stand, take few, and put the ground back as you found it.
Bear root has been dug hard for the herbal trade in the mountain states. If a stand is small, leave it.