Know the plant before you take it.

Populus balsamifera

In early spring the leaf buds of balsam poplar swell sticky and fragrant. Steeped in fat or oil they make a salve, and the smell of them is the smell of a river bottom in April.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Aspen parkland

Ligusticum porteri

minwék Cree

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.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Water hemlock, Poison hemlock

Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

Kakahsiin Blackfoot · ah-chi-kah-si-pah-kwah Cree

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.

Sandy and gravelly ground · Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland · Open prairie

Plantago major

A low rosette of ribbed oval leaves that grows in paths, yards and hard ground. Not native here, it arrived with settlement, and it has been taken up widely as a poultice plant for bites and scrapes.

Roadsides and disturbed ground · Open prairie

Shepherdia canadensis

A bitter red berry full of natural soap that whips into a foam when beaten. Sharp, distinctive, and used in small amounts rather than eaten by the handful.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Baneberry

Aspen parkland · Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland · Coulee slopes

Typha latifolia

The brown sausage heads standing in every slough. Food at four different times of year, plus mats, bedding and the down that goes inside a cradleboard.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Wild iris

Sloughs and wet meadows · Riverbanks and willow flats

Thuja plicata

mihkwásit Cree

One of the four sacred medicines. Cedar does not grow on this prairie; it comes from the west, and it has moved along trade routes into this country for a very long time. Guardian of the west in the medicine wheel.

Mountain forest

Prunus virginiana

Dark cherries in hanging clusters, sharply astringent raw and good once cooked or dried. The other great pemmican berry. The stones and the leaves are genuinely poisonous, so read the cautions.

Coulee slopes · Riverbanks and willow flats · Aspen parkland

Juniperus communis

The prickly-needled juniper of the foothills and open forest, named in the Blackfeet, Chippewa-Cree, Nakoda and Northern Cheyenne blends. Different from the flat creeping juniper of the coulee rims.

Foothills and shrubland · Mountain forest · Sandy and gravelly ground · Coulee slopes

Juniperus horizontalis

mih-kwápémakwahtik Cree

A low mat-forming evergreen of dry slopes and gravel, with blue berry-like cones. Both the greens and the berries are used, and the smoke is used to clean a space.

Coulee slopes · Sandy and gravelly ground · Open prairie · Foothills and shrubland

Grindelia squarrosa

A sticky yellow prairie daisy whose flower buds are wrapped in curled bracts and coated in white gum. Used on skin and for coughs.

Open prairie · Roadsides and disturbed ground · Coulee slopes · Sandy and gravelly ground

Chamerion angustifolium

The tall magenta spike that comes up first after a burn or a cut line. Young shoots are eaten, and the leaves are dried for tea.

Roadsides and disturbed ground · Mountain forest · Aspen parkland · Foothills and shrubland

Ribes aureum

A thornless currant of coulee bottoms with clove-scented yellow flowers in spring and dark fruit in late summer.

Coulee slopes · Riverbanks and willow flats · Aspen parkland

Equisetum arvense

A jointed hollow-stemmed plant with no true flowers, gritty with silica, used for scouring and polishing. It carries real cautions when taken internally, so it is listed here mainly as a material.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Sloughs and wet meadows · Roadsides and disturbed ground · Sandy and gravelly ground

Rhododendron groenlandicum

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.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Bog laurel, Bog rosemary

Sloughs and wet meadows · Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland

Pinus contorta

oskâhtak Cree

The straight slender pine of the foothills, and the tree that gave the lodgepole its name. Needles for tea, inner bark for food, pitch for wounds.

Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland

Artemisia frigida

The low silver cushion sage of dry, hard, overgrazed prairie. Softer and finer than prairie sage, and used alongside it.

Open prairie · Coulee slopes · Sandy and gravelly ground · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Artemisia ludoviciana

mos-tos-wi-kahs-kwah Cree

The silver-grey aromatic sage of the open prairie, and the plant most people mean when they say sage here. Cut, tied and dried for smudging, and laid down in ceremony.

Open prairie · Coulee slopes · Roadsides and disturbed ground · Sandy and gravelly ground

Pediomelum esculentum

A starchy prairie root that was a staple food across the plains, dug in early summer, peeled, braided by its own tails and hung to dry for winter.

Open prairie · Coulee slopes

Rosa acicularis

Alberta’s provincial flower, and a shrub that gives food twice: petals in summer and hips through the winter. The hips hold on through the cold and are sweetest after a hard frost.

Aspen parkland · Coulee slopes · Riverbanks and willow flats · Foothills and shrubland · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Acorus americanus

A wetland plant with a strongly aromatic root, carried and chewed in small pieces and held in high regard across the northern plains. It grows beside plants that will kill you, so this one is learned in person.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Wild iris, Water hemlock

Sloughs and wet meadows · Riverbanks and willow flats

Cornus sericea

mih-kwáh-pe-mah-kwah-tik Cree

The bright red stems along every creek and river bottom in this country. The inner bark is scraped, dried and blended into smoking mixtures, and the straight stems are used for making things.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Sloughs and wet meadows · Aspen parkland

Salix bebbiana and related species

mohkspotsil Blackfoot · spitsii Blackfoot · mihkopémak Cree

Willow grows along every creek and slough here, and it is named in the smoking-blend lists of the Blackfeet, Chippewa-Cree, Nakoda and Northern Cheyenne alike. The bark is the original aspirin.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Sloughs and wet meadows · Aspen parkland

Amelanchier alnifolia

The berry shrub of the coulees, and one of the most important food plants in this territory. Sweet purple berries in midsummer, dried in quantity for the winter and pounded into pemmican.

Coulee slopes · Aspen parkland · Riverbanks and willow flats · Foothills and shrubland

Polygala senega

A small prairie plant with a twisted, knotty root that smells faintly of wintergreen. It was dug and traded in enormous quantity out of the prairies for a century, and it has not recovered everywhere.

Open prairie · Aspen parkland

Argentina anserina

A low creeping plant of damp lake edges and slough margins with silver-backed toothed leaves and a slender starchy root.

Sloughs and wet meadows · Riverbanks and willow flats · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Urtica dioica

A tall green plant of rich damp ground that stings on contact and stops stinging entirely once cooked or dried. Eaten as a spring green and dried for tea, and the stems make strong cord.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Aspen parkland · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Abies lasiocarpa

kutoyiss Blackfoot · sitapikwan Cree

A mountain fir whose needles carry a sweet citrus smell. Traded down out of the mountains into Blackfoot country for a very long time, and used as a smudge and a scent.

Mountain forest · Foothills and shrubland

Hierochloe odorata

siputsimo Blackfoot · wi-kahsk Cree

A soft grass that smells of vanilla as it dries, braided in three and burned as a smudge. It has been picked hard across the prairies and is thin on the ground in many places.

Sloughs and wet meadows · Riverbanks and willow flats · Open prairie · Aspen parkland

Nicotiana species

Pisstukan Blackfoot · chi-stémáw Cree

The offering plant. Tobacco is what is put down first, before a medicine is taken and before a question is asked of someone who carries knowledge.

Not gathered wild in this territory

Populus tremuloides

The white-barked tree whose leaves shake in the smallest breeze, and the tree that gives the aspen parkland its name. The inner bark carries the same family of compounds as aspirin.

Aspen parkland · Foothills and shrubland · Coulee slopes · Mountain forest

Picea glauca

Patakh'i Blackfoot · sihta Cree · iyinâhtik Cree

The spruce of the river valleys and the north. Spring tips are gathered for tea, the inner bark is food in a hard winter, and the pitch is used on the skin. Named in both Blackfoot and Cree.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Yew

Mountain forest · Riverbanks and willow flats · Foothills and shrubland · Aspen parkland

Monarda fistulosa

A prairie mint with a ragged lavender flower head and a strong oregano smell. Used for colds and sore throats, and a strong scent plant.

Open prairie · Coulee slopes · Aspen parkland · Foothills and shrubland

Glycyrrhiza lepidota

A prairie pea with burred seed pods and a sweet root, common in river flats and ditches across this country.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Open prairie · Roadsides and disturbed ground · Coulee slopes

Mentha arvensis

wácask mícówin Cree

The mint that grows along creeks and in wet meadows. Easy to identify by smell, easy to dry, and a good first plant to learn with children.

Riverbanks and willow flats · Sloughs and wet meadows · Aspen parkland

Allium textile and Allium cernuum

Small wild onions come up across the open prairie in spring. They are excellent, and they grow in the same ground as death camas, which kills people and livestock. The smell is the whole test.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Death camas

Open prairie · Coulee slopes · Aspen parkland · Sandy and gravelly ground

Rubus idaeus

Thorny canes in coulee bottoms, clearings and burns. Fruit in late summer, and a leaf tea that is one of the most widely used mild remedies in the north.

Coulee slopes · Aspen parkland · Mountain forest · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Fragaria virginiana

Small wild strawberries, far better than anything in a shop, in open woods and grassy clearings through early summer. The leaf makes a good mild tea.

Aspen parkland · Open prairie · Foothills and shrubland · Mountain forest

Elaeagnus commutata

The silver shrub of the coulee sides, whose heavy sweet smell in June is one of the surest signs of early summer on this prairie. Not a willow at all.

Coulee slopes · Open prairie · Riverbanks and willow flats · Roadsides and disturbed ground

Achillea millefolium

A feathery-leaved plant with a flat white flower head, found almost everywhere in this territory. Long used on cuts and scrapes. It also has two deadly look-alikes, so read the identification carefully.

▲ Deadly look-alike: Poison hemlock, Water hemlock

Open prairie · Coulee slopes · Aspen parkland · Roadsides and disturbed ground · Foothills and shrubland