WINTERGREEN

BRONZED TAMARACK NEEDLES  BRIGHTEN A GRAY MORNING 

AROMATIC, EVERGREEN, WINTERGREEN LEAVES

FRAGRANT, TASTY BERRIES

Monday, 8:30 AM.  46 degrees F, wind variable,  light.  The sky is partly cloudy, and the morning is gray and subdued. The humidity is 79%, the barometer is down to 29.63" and will probably be steady throughout the day, as a low pressure system moves slowly in from the west, bringing with it a strong probability of rain.
   Wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens, in the heath family (Ericaceae) is an aromatic, evergreen sub-shrub native to mid-eastern Canada, the Lake States, New England, and south  at elevation in the Appalachian Mountains.
   The genus is named for the Eighteenth-Century Canadian royal physician and naturalist Jean-Francis Gaultier, and as the species name implies, creeps flat along the ground.  It is a familiar woodland plant of Northern Wisconsin.  It is also called teaberry, and the leaves and berries were used by Indians and settlers alike as a tonic and tea.  The crushed laves, which have aspirin-like qualities, have long been used by both cultures as an anti-arthrytic liniment.  I often chew the leaves and eat the pleasant-tasting berries, but ingested  in large amounts they may be poisonous. The plants are also food for deer and grouse.