Mother's Herb Garden: Wintergreen
Riddle me low, riddle me high,/Thrice eleven names have I!/Red are my berries, my blossoms white,/Green are my leaves, with flavor bright./Food for the partridge, food for the deer,/Green undying, though winter be here.
January/February 1982
By the Mother Earth News editors
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Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) has 33 common names!
MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
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Lately, more and more people have begun to understand just how limited — in both variety and nutritional value — our "modern" diets have become. This realization has sparked a new and widespread interest in the culinary and therapeutic uses of herbs, those plants which (although not well-known today) were, just one short generation ago, honored "guests" on the dinner tables and in the medicine chests of our grandparents' homes. In this regular feature, we'll examine the availability, cultivation and benefits of our "forgotten" vegetable foods and remedies, and — we hope — help prevent the loss of still another bit of ancestral lore.
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If you enjoy walking in mountain woods, you may already have met this charming herb. Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens ) is common over the eastern United States from Canada to the hills of Georgia, and thrives in the acidic leaf-mold soil and filtered shade often found at the edges of forests. It grows from a creeping underground stem that lies just below the surface of the soil. From this "root" individual plants rise some 2 to 6 inches bearing alternate, broad, leathery leaves that are glossy green above and paler beneath.
Nodding white flowers, each shaped like a single lily-of-the-valley blossom, appear in July or August, followed by shiny red berries that last all winter and are an important food source for grouse and deer. (Years ago, they were also sold, as confections, in the markets of Boston.)
Wintergreen leaves were often used by the Indians as treatment for toothaches and as a rub or tea for relieving the pains of rheumatism. Poultices of the foliage were applied to boils, felons (whitlows), swellings and inflammations — while small doses of wintergreen tea were reputed to improve one's general health and sense of well-being. (Large or too frequently taken amounts of the beverage, however, may have the opposite effect, causing inflammation of the stomach, swelling of the tongue, vomiting and rapid heartbeat!) And oil of wintergreen (natural or synthetic) has long been a major ingredient in ointments and liniments.
