Teaberry: American Wintergreen

American winterberry, or Teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens), a great trailside nibble.

       Last week, I spent some time with my grandparents in Pennsylvania and I learned of an herb that they called teaberry.  I was told that even in winter, the leaves of the evergreen plant remain, so I thought there was a chance that I could still find some.  However, teaberry did not appear in any of my books, so I didn't even know exactly what to look for.  With a few inches of fresh snow on the ground, and more falling, I laced up my boots and trudged out into the old field adjacent to my grandparent's house.  In no time at all, I found a small, evergreen plant, that had a slight scent of wintergreen.  This was the plant!  What I did not expect were the many red, persistent fruit that had set in the summer, still clinging to the plant just inches above the frozen ground.

      With the plant in question in front of me, I was able to identify it by it's scientific name and clear up any confusion I previously had.  The mystery plant turned out to be American Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) but it has many colloquial names including: boxberry, checkerberry, and partridge berry (the similar looking Mitchelle repens is also called partridgeberry), and of course teaberry (Peterson 1977).  Now I was sure of the plant, so I tasted it.  I tried the fruit first.  They were a initially a little mealy, but a powerful wintergreen flavor, caused from the oil methyl salicylate, soon followed.  In my experience, the flavoring oils of plants are normally most noticeable in the leaves, so I was not expecting to have such an intense wintergreen flavor in the fruit itself.  The great flavor combined with the fact that the berries persist in good condition through winter make it an excellent plant to know, especially for winter hikes.  The leaves weren't as flavorful as the fruit, but I was told that macerating them in warm water brings out the the wintergreen flavor.  Wikipedia and some other sites indicate that this is true, but I'll have to try it first.  I picked some berries for consumption, and some leaves that I'll dry and use for tea or mead later.
      If you seek the plant, look for an evergreen plant growing in bright, acidic conditions.  Peterson's Field Guide to Edible Plants says it is associated with pines, and I found mine right under pines, so you may want to start there.  The plant I found consisted of whorls of glossy leaves  a few inches off the ground, attached to branchlets that sprouted off of a creeping underground stem.  Some of the more exposed leaves took on a reddish hue for the winter.  The reddish leaves seemed to be the most astringent and least flavorful.  If you can't find this plant, the sweet birch (Betula lenta) offers the same oil, methyl salicylate, that you can use as a flavoring, but that is another story.
      WARNING: Like always, too much of a good thing can be bad.  If you do use this plant, do not overuse it..  Methyl salicylate is similar to acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin, and functions in a similar way.  So if you are allergic to aspirin, DO NOT use wintergreen.
      Now that I confirmed that teaberry is the same as wintergreen, everything makes sense.  Apparently, wintergreen got it's name because it was green in winter (i.e. it's an evergreen).  I should have known that when I went out searching for an aromatic, evergreen plant that I was in fact looking for wintergreen.

*Note:  It is your responsibility to correctly identify any plant you plan on eating consult a local expert 

 and/or an accurate field guide.  Do not eat any wild plant unless you are 100% sure of its identity.

I consult Peterson's Field Guide to Edible Plants extensively in my foraging and writing.

Read more at these sites:
Arthur Lee Jacobson's plant site
Herbs 2000

References
Peterson, Lee A., Peterson's Field Guides: Edible Wild Plants. 224. Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, New York, 1977.