Plants Pacific Northwest

Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi - Kinnikannick

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Plate 092 Plate 093

Plate 094 Plate 094b

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Arctostaphylos uva-ursi: Kinnikannick, common bearberry.

Nick-named 'bearberry' because bears regard the roots and berries as very highly prized, with many sites dug up and roots eaten.

Kinnikinnick is found growing in sandy, well-drained exposed sites, dry rocky slopes, dry forest and clearings; very common and widespread from low, sea-level elevations, to alpine tundra.

The plant is a trailing evergreen, the ascending tips usually not more than 20 cm long, often forming large mat areas (plate 094). The branches and roots are flexible colored in dark, rusty red brown bark.

Leaves are small, oval to spoon shape, leathery and alternate dark green with shiny surface on top, matte and somewhat paler beneath.

Flowers are pinkish white, small and urn shaped, drooping in a terminal cluster. Flowering in late spring
(April to June), the kinnikinnick bears ripe red fruit by Septembers end. The berries are white and mealy inside with large, hard seeds. For as tasty as the berries look, they are very tasteless inside, but the outside skin is rather yummy. The main attraction is that these ripe berries will stay on the plant most of the winter and present themselves as a good survival meal (even when dug out from the snow). Cooking or roasting the berries enhanses the flavour, when mixed with salal, also make tasty jam or cakes.

Kinnikinnick is said to bean Algonquian word for 'smoking mixture.' The dried leaves were smoked by a number of coastal tribes including Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haida, Nuxalk, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw and other coastal mainland peoples. The Nuxalk made special smoking pipes from gooseberry stems, and some of the tribes mixed the kinnikinnick leaves with tobacco leaves once the tobacco plants had been introduced to North America. Other tribes often mixed the kinnikinnick leaves with dwarf bunchberry or dogwood leaves (cornus canadensis) and the dried , pulverized leaves of the salal plant. Many recorded events in pioneer times were witnessed while drunken sprees were produced by swallowing and/or inhaling the smoke of these mixtures.

The whole plant contains tannic acid and has a long-standing reputation as an astringent and diuretic medicine. Herbalists use A. uva-ursi as the species of choice for ailments such as inflammations of the urinary and digestive tracts. Folklore applications state that A. uva-ursi was used as a remedy for hemorrhoids and postpartum swelling (sitz bath with a diluted decoction of the kinnikinnick reduces swelling with the astringent properties).