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. T hese 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. B earberry 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. But bearberries were an important Ojibwe food cooked, being stewed with venison, which they imparted a slightly armoatic taste to, and where their rather bland pulp picked up flavors of the meat and other herbs and veghetables it was cooked with. M ost attention has been devoted to the leaves. For medicinal teas, leaves should be gathereed in early autumn before the berries are fully ripe. T eas made from bearberry leaves are astringent, tonic, diuretic and are a beneficial treatment for infections of the urinary tract, because some of their chemicals combine with chemicals normally found in the urine to form hydroquinone in sufficient quantities to be a potent germ-killer.