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What's news in nature?
BY CHARLES GARRATT • STAFF WRITER
 | | Teaberries are a refreshing treat for winter woodland visitors. Often persisting until spring, the red berries are a bit dry, but full of the taste of wintergreen. Don't mistake them for the toxic partridgeberry, also found in the Highlands. (Recorder photo by Charles Garratt) |
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MARES RUN - The diminutive little teaberry is a favorite forest snack for those who know the refreshing wintergreen flavor of the berries.
While the berries can be dry and pulpy, they contain enough oil of wintergreen to be full of flavor without being toxic. Oil of wintergreen, methyl salicylate, is found in a variety of plants and was produced commercially from birch twigs and teaberry leaves.
Methyl salicylate is used in deep heating liniments and in very small quantities as a flavoring and fragrance. The small quantities contained in teaberry are not likely to cause problems, but large quantities of oil of wintergreen can cause stomach and kidney illnesses.
Eastern teaberry, Gaultheria procumbens, is a native plant common throughout the Highlands and eastern woodlands. The small plants are classified as shrubs. Large patches can develop from underground spreading of the root system.
The tough, leathery leaves also contain the wintergreen flavor and may be chewed instead of the berries. Dried, the leaves and berries make a pleasant tea. For maximum production of oil of wintergreen, the leaves are first fermented.
"Wintergreen" was first used to describe plants having green leaves through the winter. Teaberry is one of many plants known as wintergreen or having wintergreen as part of its name. Plants with green winter leaves like teaberry are now more commonly called evergreen.
Oil of wintergreen is found in other plant families including birch and many pyrolas and some of these plants are known as wintergreen even though they do not have green winter leaves. The name follows the distinctive aroma and taste of wintergreen oil.
Teaberry flavor is known even to those who live in cities from the gum sold by Clark named after the berry from which it receives its flavor. Although today the gum is flavored with artificially produced oil of wintergreen.
For those who don't have a patch of wintergreen in the woods, seed and plants are available for the home herb garden.
Partridgeberry is another native evergreen plant with red berries found in Highland woods. It is not as common as teaberry and grows in low mats instead of the erect plants of teaberry.
The red partridgeberry has dimples on the bottom from the two ovaries that fuse to form the one berry and is considered toxic by some sources. Teaberry is more apple like with only one dimple and tiny stem like protrusion on the bottom.
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