Labrador tea
Rhododendron groenlandicum
Also called Muskeg tea, Swamp tea, Hudson’s Bay tea
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
The muskeg tea plant. A low evergreen shrub of bogs and wet spruce ground whose leaves roll under at the edges and carry rusty wool beneath. One of the most widely drunk plants in the north.
Speak with someone who knows this plant before you harvest it.
Take care
- Bog laurel and bog rosemary grow in the same ground and are both poisonous. Rusty wool on the leaf underside, every time.
- Weak and occasional, not strong and daily. Not in pregnancy.
What it is confused with
Deadly look-alikeBog laurel Kalmia polifolia
Bog laurel grows in the same bogs, has similar narrow leaves with rolled edges, and is seriously poisonous. Its leaf underside is smooth and WHITISH, never rusty and woolly, its leaves sit in opposite pairs, and its flowers are pink and saucer-shaped rather than white. Turn the leaf over every time.
Deadly look-alikeBog rosemary Andromeda polifolia
Also poisonous, also a bog plant with rolled leaf edges. Underside is smooth and blue-white, not rusty-woolly, and the flowers are small pink bells.
How to know it
- Leaf underside
- Dense rusty-orange wool on the underside of every leaf. This is the identification, and it is unmistakable once you have turned one leaf over.
- Leaf edge
- Rolled tightly under, so the leaf looks narrower than it is.
- Smell
- Strongly aromatic and resinous when crushed.
- Flowers
- Clusters of small white flowers at the branch tips in early summer.
- Where
- Bogs, muskeg, and wet black spruce ground. It does not grow on dry prairie.
The country it grows in
- Sloughs and wet meadows
- 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 We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.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
- Leaves June to SeptemberLeaves can be taken any time they are green, but they are strongest before flowering.
Right now it is July. Something on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Food and drink
- Breathing and colds
- Rest and calm
Drunk as a tea right across the north, which is where the names muskeg tea and Hudson’s Bay tea come from.
How it is prepared
- Tea
A few leaves steeped in hot water. Steep it gently and briefly.
Do not boil it hard or steep it for a long time, and do not drink it by the potful. Strong or prolonged preparations of this plant can make you unwell.
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.
Pick a few leaves from many plants. Bog plants grow very slowly, and a bog that gets stripped stays stripped.