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Medicinal Plants - Wet Prairie

On this page you will find a listing of all the plants studied. The links to the plant pages will open in a new window. The letter in square brackets is the accessible keyboard shortcut.

Buffalo Bean [B] Thermospsis rhombifolia

WARNING: All parts of Buffalo Bean are considered poisonous. Buffalo Bean or Golden Bean, is a plant our elders used when they wanted to dye a skin bag or arrows yellow. They would take the yellow flowers and make a strong tea and soak the thing they wanted colored in the tea. A very weak tea was also made to help people and horses with stomach pains....

Chokecherry [C] Prunus virginiana L.

The chokecherry tree is a very generous tree. It gives us many things for eating, medicine and tools. You find the chokecherry at the edge of ravines, wooded areas and scrubby patches. It can be small like a bush of 2 metres or large like a tree up to 4 metres. The flowers have 5 white petals that bloom in May and June. The round, dark red, pitted berry comes later, in August and September....

Gooseberry [G] Ribes oxyacanthoides L.

Gooseberry bushes have prickly branches and bright green leaves. The edges of the leaves are jagged, and can have 3-7 rounded segments, but the base of the leaf is heart-shaped, and they look sort of like maple leaves. The shrub blooms in June with lots of greenish white to cream coloured flowers close together. The round, reddish brown gooseberries turn a blackish color when they are ripe, and are 4-10 mm in diameter....

Locoweed [L] Oxytropis sp.

WARNING: All parts of the Locoweed plant can be poisonous if taken in large quantities. Several species of locoweed concentrate the chemical selenium and are known to be poisonous. The flowers of the Locoweed can be purple or a deep blue, and grow on a soft hairy spike made up of 8-12 flowers. The spike of flowers can be 2.5-4 cm long. The plant blooms in June and July, and it likes to grow in areas of the grassland where it can get lots of moisture....

Narrow-leaf Dock [N] Rumex mexicanus

Narrow-leaf Dock is a large, coarse plant with a stem that is strongly grooved and it has a long, thick root. It can grow up to two meters high. It has long bluish-green leaves and pale yellow flowers that produces dark red fruit. Narrow-leaf dock is found in wet, salty areas, waste areas and ditches, throughout the foothills and mountains. It works to clean the dirty water....

Prairie Aster [P] Aster sp.

The Prairie Aster is a little (2 cm) soft purple flower with a dark yellow centre found in scrubby roadside ditches or in moist spots on the open prairie. You see them blooming in August and September. The dark green, oval-shaped leaves grow on the smooth stem, and they are thick and smooth. This plant grows from 30-90 cm tall. Prairie Asters were rubbed on bouncing arrows by children for colour, and the flowers were also used to make necklaces by our elders....

Red Tea [R]

Red tea is a plant that grows in swampy areas according to Elder Shirley Mountain Horse. Elder Adam Delaney told us that it has yellow flowers with a brown centre that are about 3 cm wide. The plant grows about 45 cm tall. Sandra Singer told us that you could cut the plant into pieces when it is dry or fresh, to use later on to make a tea. You can mix the Red Tea with Mint for flavour....

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Red-osier Dogwood [R] Cornus stolonifera

WARNING: All parts of Red-osier Dogwood can be poisonous, if taken in large amounts. Red-osier Dogwood is a bush with red bark that grows in coulees and damp ravines to a height of 90-180 cm. The stems are quite bendable and its medium green leaves are rounded at the base with a pointed tip and with short hairs at the bottom. In June, this Dogwood blossoms with tiny (1 mm) greenish white flowers that are clustered together in groups of 8-12 that make them look much bigger....

Roughfruit Fairybells [R] Prosartes trachycarpa S. Wats.

This fragile plant has thin, delicate leaves and creamy flowers that hang from the tips of its 'branches'. In the summer, the tiny white flowers become a rough and leathery fruit divided into three sections, turning first yellow and then brilliant red; looking much like a small brightly coloured peach. These berries can be eaten raw. A tea of bark can be used as an eyewash for snowblindness....

Saskatoon [S] Amelanchier alnifolia (Nutt.) Nutt. ex M. Roemer

The Saskatoon plant gives us food to eat, medicine and wood for building things. The berries are really good just picked but you can also dry them and store them. When the berries are dried, you can boil them in water with a bit of fat and make a soup with it. Our elders served this soup at special ceremonies. Dried berries were crushed with a stone by our elders and mixed with fat and dried meat to make pemmican, a dried food stored for winter....

Silver Buffaloberry [S] Shepherdia argentea (Pursh) Nutt.

A Silver Buffaloberry Bush can be found near rivers and streams. It has silvery leaves and branches. The leaves are thick and if you look at them closely you will see brown spots. The branches look broken; they grow at odd angles and they have many thorns. The berries are an orangey scarlet colour and grow the whole length of the branch. The bush grows from 2 to 4 metres tall....

Sweetgrass [S] Hierchloe odorata

Sweetgrass is a smooth, flat-leaf bladed grass that grows 30-60 cm tall in moist areas. It likes low meadows or coulees. Elders Mary Rose and Margaret Gros Ventre Boy showed us that their roots have a purplish red color. It is harvested in late summer. Our teachers, Alvine Mountain Horse and Sylvia Gros Ventre Boy, showed us how to bind the stems at the lower end with other stems and how to braid it....

Water Smartweed [W] Polygonum amphibium L.

Elder Carolla Calf Robe told us that Bitter-root grows in swampy places on the reserve. In July, the whitish-purple flowers bloom and look like a spike. The leaves are about 10-20 cm long and are a deep green. Carolla says that there is no easy way to pick Bitter-root, they are collected from ponds and swampy areas and it is messy! You just have to put on your gumboots and go right in; sometimes you have to go knee high in the water to find some....

Western Meadow Rue [W] Tahlictrum occidentale

Elder Carolla Wolf Child told us that Meadow Rue grows in wooded areas, often near Saskatoon bushes. Look for it in wooded areas and in the coulees. The bluish green leaves grow close to the ground. The flowers are on top of a skinny stem about 15 cm off of the ground. The yellowish flowers bloom from the middle of June to July and they don't last long....

Wild Mint [W] Mentha arvensis L.

A healing tea of mint can be made for upset stomachs and sore throats. Our elders used it for heart troubles. Mint works great at keeping away bugs and small animals because it has a strong smell. Our elders packed mint with food and in parfleshes for that reason. Our elders also disguised the smell of things from animals, like traps, by rubbing mint on them....

Willow [W] Salix sp.

Where we live, there are many, many kinds of willow and we use the different willows for different things. One kind of willow we use to make a sweat lodge. One end of the willow is dug into the ground and the willow is bent over to make a cave shape. The willow frame is then covered with blankets or hides when we are ready for our sweat. Elder Harrison Wolf Calf told us that the Blood people have a special sweat lodge because there is one door to enter into it another door to leave....

Wolf Willow [W] Elaeagnus commutata Bernh. ex Rydb.

Wolf Willow or Silver Berry is a bush that grows 30 cm to 6 m high in the wet areas of the plains and at the edges of coulees. It shimmers silver in the sun and moonlight, with the flowers, berries and leaves all being a shade of silver. The flowers are silver yellow and grow to be about 3 mm across. The flowers grow together in groups of 3 or 4 in June....

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