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Fields, Forests & Wetlands Foods of Eastern North America
A Complete Wild Food Guide
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Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum
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Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum in with moss. (Superior National Forest Attribution 2.0 Generic)
Season: Late Summer & Fall
Urban, Rural or Both: Rural
Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum (Gaultheria hispidula). Do not confuse this plant with the poisonous "Snowberry" (Symphoricarpos), specifically the Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) which has fruit that looks very similar. The Creeping Snowberry is a ground level type plant properly called a prostrate shrub. Most people refer plants like this as "ground-cover" plants. If it is not within 10 cm (4 inches) of the ground, it is not the edible Creeping Snowberry. The fruit of the edible Creeping Snowberry is shaped like a small white egg, while the not edible Common Snowberry is more spherical.
You find this plant in shady or mottled light areas that are moist with acidic to neutral soils and rotting wood on the ground.
Due to the acidic taste of this fruit, and the relative rarity of this plant and its fruit, it is a snack like food, not a meal food. I will say, it is nice after a meal while on a walk, and seems to aid digestion - maybe that is the acidity. Has a Wintergreen taste, which is not surprising as it is a close relative of the Wintergreen plant. Easy to think of this as the white berry Wintergreen.
Remember, it must be very close to the ground and shaped like a small egg.
Growing this plant in your home garden:
For growing instructions, go to my Wild Foods Home Garden website Snowberry page.
Description:
- Plant Size: prostrate shrub 10 cm (4 inches) high, 1 meter (3 feet) diameter
- Duration: Evergreen Perennial
- Leaf Shape: Ovate
- Leaf Phyllotaxis (Leaf Arrangement) on branch: Alternate
- Leaf Size: 1 cm or under (2/5 inch) long
- Leaf Margin: Entire (smooth edged) with tiny reddish hairs coming from leaf margin
- Leaf Notes: Wintergreen smell, dark to yellow-green, often curled back (not folded along central vein) so tip of leaf is folding back making upper side of leaf arced, leaves on plant year round
- Flowers: Light greenish white, springtime
- Fruit: Look like little white eggs, ripe in fall, with acidic taste and wintergreen quality, fruit is as big or even bigger than the biggest leaf on the plant
- Bark: Branches have a reddish or green color with reddish hairs
- Habitat: Acidic to neutral soil, open woods in damp ground, often near wet areas and where there is decaying wood in or on the ground
- Recipe search on the web here (Google search) and here (Bing search).
- Pictures of the Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum (Gaultheria hispidula) on the web here (Google images) and here (Bing images).
- USDA distribution map and plant profile here.
- The Biota of North America Program (BONAP) distribution map here. BONAP map color key here.
Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum (Gaultheria hispidula) range. Distribution map courtesy of U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA Natural Resources Service) and used in accordance with their policies.
Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum. (By: Jomegat CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Creeping Snowberry or Moxie-Plum growing on open ground. (Superior National Forest Attribution 2.0 Generic)
(Robert H. Mohlenbrock, hosted by the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / USDA NRCS. 1995. Northeast wetland flora: Field office guide to plant species. Northeast National Technical Center, Chester.)
Drawing. (USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. 3 vols. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Vol. 2: 704)
Poisonous Look-Alike:
- Pictures of the POISONOUS Common Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) on the web here (Google images) and here (Bing images).
- USDA distribution map and plant profile here.
- The Biota of North America Program (BONAP) distribution map here. BONAP map color key here.
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