Bearberry
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
Also called Kinnikinnick, Uva-ursi
- Blackfoot
- Kakahsiin
- Cree
- ah-chi-kah-si-pah-kwah
Know another name for this plant, or a different spelling? Tell us.
A low evergreen mat of small leathery leaves with dry red berries. The dried leaf is the base of the smoking mixtures used across this territory.
Speak with someone who knows this plant before you harvest it.
Take care
- Bearberry leaf tea is a documented traditional remedy but carries real cautions: it is not taken in pregnancy, not taken for long stretches, and not taken by people with kidney trouble. This page does not give a preparation for drinking it.
What it is confused with
Easily confusedLingonberry Vaccinium vitis-idaea
Lingonberry leaves are notched at the tip and dotted with dark bristles underneath, and its berries are juicy and tart rather than dry and mealy.
How to know it
- Habit
- A trailing evergreen mat, ankle high at most, often on sand or under open pine.
- Leaves
- Small, thick, leathery, spoon-shaped, dark glossy green, staying on the plant all winter.
- Flowers
- Small pink or white urn-shaped bells hanging in little clusters in spring.
- Berries
- Bright red, dry and mealy rather than juicy, holding on into winter.
The country it grows in
- Sandy and gravelly ground
- Mountain forest
- Foothills and shrubland
- Open prairie
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Leaves January to DecemberEvergreen, so available year round. Most often gathered late summer into autumn.
- Berries August to October
Right now it is July. Something on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Smudge and ceremony
- Tools and materials
Dried and shredded leaf is the base of the smoking mixtures widely documented across the plains, often blended with red osier dogwood inner bark.
Berries are edible but dry and largely tasteless, and were mostly a famine food.
How it is prepared
- Dried and stored
Leaves are dried until brittle then rubbed or shredded fine.
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.
These mats grow slowly on poor ground. Pick leaves from across a wide area rather than clearing a patch.