Wintergreen (gaultheria procumbens)

Wintergreen or eastern teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2010, all rights reserved

I'm going to start off the list of plants that grow in my yard with one that was a very pleasant surprise when I moved here. Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), sometimes called Eastern Teaberry, is one of the edible native plants that lives in the woods in my yard. It is very plentiful, growing in the shade of the forest canopy. Wintergreen is both edible and potentially deadly poisonous, so please read the information contained in the linked article. It happens to be one of the few plants about which I've already written for Examiner.com so I'm going to refer you to the link below for what I wrote there which includes medicinal properties and poison warnings.

• Read more about Wintergreen

Additionally, I will tell you that this spring, 2011, seemed to be a very good year for new wintergreen plants. The reddish young leaves of new plants seemed to be springing up everywhere.

To date, I haven't found any evidence of the plant being eaten by anything (other than myself). It seems to be pretty well left alone by insects and other herbivores. It grows in normal to moist soil conditions in the shade or very dappled sunlight. It gets it's name, as you might guess, because it stays green and keeps its leaves all year, through even the coldest of New England winters. Given the low light environment in which it lives, it must find it more economical of energy and nutrients to preserve its leaves through winter than to try to grow new ones every spring. Keeping the leaves through winter, of course, also gives wintergreen an advantage in the spring time, it can take advantage of the bare canopies overhead while the sun's indirect rays are still relatively weak in the early part of the year.

I recall that in grade school many years ago in southern Vermont, when we learned how to make little terrariums, wintergreen was one of the plants we sought. It needs little light, can live in humid and moist environment, was very slow growing, and of course, doesn't drop its leaves and look dead in the winter. As a bonus, depending upon the plant you found, it might also have a bright red berry to give the terrarium a little bit of color.

Quick Facts about Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

Edible: Yes, in small quantities. Can be fermented to make a tea.
Life cycle: Perennial, evergreen
Propagation: Spreading underground rhizomes, less often by seeds contained in berry
Other uses: Essential oil, medicinal uses (See linked article above for details)
Range: Eastern North America from the Gulf of Mexico and north through out eastern Canada (from the USDA website)
Native or introduced: Native, undomesticated
Poisonous: Yes, in quantity. Wintergreen essential oil has been known to cause fatalities through both ingestion and excessive topical use.