Homegrown Habitat, November 2024: Red Bearberry
Many songbirds eat red bearberries. Jesse Taylor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Sarah Middeleer has written two dozen Homegrown Habitat columns and this is the first one that stumped me. I’d never heard of red bearberry and I’m fairly sure I haven’t come upon it in the woods. I’m more than glad to make its acquaintance, though, and I’m hoping the so-called “frequency illustion” takes effect and I start encountering it everywhere. If you grow red bearberry, know of some wild specimens, or have questions for Sarah, email homegrown@ctaudubon.org. Send us photos too, if you have good shots! — Tom Andersen, Communications Director
Red bearberry is an unusual evergreen ground cover that solves many garden problems with beauty and flair—if it’s in the right location. Arctostaphylos uva-ursi is named for its gustatory appeal to bears, but other wildlife, including birds, also eat its red fruit in fall and winter. (Don’t worry about attracting bears with this plant, unless they are already regular visitors.) Other common names include kinnikinick, bear’s grape, hog craneberry, and sandberry.
Red bearberry’s range is circumpolar, as it is native to many northern regions in North America, Europe, and Asia. In North America it grows from Alaska to Newfoundland, south through Canada to Virginia, Illinois, South Dakota, New Mexico, and central California. It is found on gravelly, sandy sites, dry rocky slopes and outcrops, forest margins, and woodland clearings. In southern reaches of its range, red bearberry typically grows at higher elevations.
Red bearberry is actually a low shrub, with reddish, exfoliating bark, that grows six to 12 inches high and has a spread of three to six feet. Its leaves turn bronze in winter and green up again in spring. Bell-shaped, drooping flower clusters, white with a pink tinge, appear April to May. The shiny red fruits (drupes) linger on bearberry throughout the winter if they aren’t eaten, eventually drying rather than rotting—thus providing good emergency food during the leanest time of the year. These fruits are technically edible by humans, but most gardeners leave them for the birds and other wildlife, who find them tastier than we do.
This plant is used by 12 butterfly and moth species as a larval host, which frequent readers will remember is vital for the many birds that eat caterpillars and feed them to their young. Butterflies, hummingbirds, and native bees are attracted to the flowers, and many songbirds eat the fruit. Bearberry is said to be deer and rabbit resistant.
This prostrate ground cover takes full sun to light shade in soils that are acidic and medium to dry with excellent drainage. Bearberry won’t tolerate soils that are too rich or fertilized; nor will it tolerate inundation. Choose a location for red bearberry carefully, because it also doesn’t like to be transplanted.
Tribal people are said to have dried red bearberry leaves and smoked them in pipes. Robert Flogaus-Faust, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Red bearberry is salt tolerant, thus making it useful for seaside gardens and along roadways. (It flourishes in large colonies on Cape Cod.)
Bearberry is very effective in rock gardens, particularly on a slope with rock outcrops, and it works well as a “living mulch” in sunny beds. Bearberry is excellent for erosion control as well.
Combine it with tall native grasses like switchgrass or bluestem, as well as the shrub sweetfern, Eastern red cedar, and sumacs for a dramatic, tough native planting that has four-season interest and will attract many birds.
The musical name kinnikinnick is evidently Algonquin for “smoking mixture.” Tribal people are said to have dried the leaves and smoked them in pipes, sometimes in combination with tobacco and the dry inner bark of redosier dogwood. Bearberry leaves contain a compound called arbutin, which inhibits melatonin production and can potentially lighten skin. The plant has also been used for medicinal teas, and the leaves have been used in leather and hide tanning.
Resources
Books
Anna Fialkoff and Heather McCargo, Native Ground Covers for Northeast Landscapes, Wild Seed Project, 2022
Dan Jaffe and Mark Richardson, Native Plants for New England Gardens, Globe Pequot, 2008
Jared Rosenbaum, Wild Plant Culture A Guide to Restoring Edible and Medicinal Native Plant Communities, New Society Publishers, 2023
Websites
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (kinnikinnick, red bearberry): Go Botany
Plant Finder – Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
red bearberry – Arctostaphylos uva-ursi from Native Plant Trust
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Kinnikinnick) | Native Plants of North America
