Oregon Grape:A Traditional Food Plant
Don’t be fooled by the name. The Oregon Grape is not a real grape. Oregon Grape is an evergreen shrub, found along the Pacific coast. The berries grow in clusters and look a bit like tiny grapes, thus the name. Also don’t mistake it for the invasive English Holly. A close examination reveals spiky edges but Oregon Grape has longer stems with flatter leaflets.
Companion Plants Growing in my Backyard – Salal on the left, Oregon Grape on the right
I’ve previously written about Salal as a traditional food plant found in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Grape often grows beside Salal as natural companion plants. They are frequently found together forming a low ground cover in the forests at low to mid-elevations. Both are plants native to western North America, widely-distributed and easily identifiable. Their berries attract birds and other animals.
Oregon Grape belongs to the Berberidaceae family, genus Mahonia and there are two main varieties:
- the low, slow growing Mahonia nervosa most commonly found in the woods as a ground cover. It is an evergreen shrub (may turn purplish if stressed or in the winter), slow growing, and grows about 2 feet tall.
- a tall variety, Mahonia aquifolium (also called Berberis aquifolium or hollyleaved barberry) that is prized for its beauty and heartiness and commonly used for landscaping purposes
Both have bright golden yellow flowers in the spring that bear clusters of berries in mid-summer.
Oregon Grape Berries
The berries are powder-blue or dark purple-black color with often a silvery-white waxy bloom. Each berry has a few large seeds.
They are edible but are very tart. Therefore, like the Salal, they are most often used for making jelly which is what I did. After picking I followed the same procedure that I outlined in the Salal Jelly post and was rewarded this year with two small jars of a tart, lemony jelly.
The slight sourness that still remains made me think of using it for a shrub (a cocktail term for a berry and vinegar syrup), but that’s a topic for another blog!
Besides having edible berries, Oregon Grape is also known as a medicinal plant. Many West Coast First Nations used it for medicine. It contains the compound berberine, which is mainly found in the roots and bark of the plant. Berberine has antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, and antibiotic properties so was used as a blood tonic, liver stimulant, and a laxative. It was also a source of dye. The bark of the stems and roots can be boiled to make a bright yellow dye which was used to colour various materials such as the those used in basketry.
References
US National Park Service – https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/oregon-grape.htm
Northern Bushcraft Edible Berries BC – https://northernbushcraft.com/berries/britishcolumbia.php
Sierra Club BC – https://sierraclub.bc.ca/ecomap/oregon-grape/
E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia – https://linnet.geog.ubc.ca/Atlas/Atlas.aspx?sciname=Berberis%20aquifolium&noTransfer=0
