BEARBERRY: ID and Info
Jump to Page Navigation Buttons===>>Bearberries, best known as Kinikinnik from an
eastern Algonquian language, are Sagako
minagunj, meaning "berry with spikes" in
Ojibwe. In Hesquiat and Ahousat, of Vancouver
Island, it's Tl'aqpt for the leaves, and Tl'itl'itlk'aqtl
for the berries. At the left, here, where the berries
have just ripened in late fall after a hard frost, it's
not so clear why they were called spikey berries.These are some stiff, white or reddish
waxy little flowers of the plant, which
blooms in early to midsummer. Flowers
appear in clusters of 3 - 15, followed in
the fall by berries.Bearberry is a true shrub, with woody, branched stems, up to 2' long, but these stems lie
flat, sometimes wholly or partly underground. Branches bearing leaves, flowers, berries are
only a few inches high. The shrub often forms a dense mat on the sandy, gravelly soil it likes,
from the Arctic Circle south to the latitude of Virginia, in North America, Europe and Asia.Pulled from the ground and silhouetted, we can
see -- from the remains of the flower stamens that
protrude from the berries -- where it gets its
Ojibwe name of "spikey berries". The woody
stem is being held at an angle for the photo; short
branches with bunches of leathery, glossy
evergreen leaves are what most people think is the
whole plant.Bearberry: ID, pix, gen info
http://www.kstrom.net/isk/food/beartrib.html (1 of 3) [5/17/2004 11:51:20 AM]