Juneberry

Juneberry: what was it used for?

Food first. The Chippewa, Densmore says, called them Juneberries, found them abundantly in their country, and “considered them the simplest form of refreshment”; the Flambeau and Pillager Ojibwe dried them for winter, “the Indians often preferring them to blueberries,” and the Forest Potawatomi relished them fresh and dried or canned them. The bark was medicine: the Pillager Ojibwe made a tea of it for the expectant mother, and the Forest Potawatomi a tonic of the root bark; Smith could find no record of any medicinal use by white men. Sargent knew the fruit as sweet and edible and the hard satiny wood as the handle of tools.

Juneberry: what does modern science say?

The Saskatoon berry, the western species, has been examined as a crop: forty-eight bioactive compounds in four genotypes grown in Poland, among them four anthocyanins, nine phenolic acids, flavonols, flavan-3-ols, carotenoids, and tocopherols, with the antioxidant capacity varying by clone. In a 2008 study of four berries of the traditional Native American diet, including this one and the chokecherry, the carotenoids were potent inhibitors of aldose reductase, the enzyme of diabetic microvascular damage, and the phenolics lowered glucose and the expression of inflammatory genes in the laboratory assays.

Juneberry: what did the older authorities say?

Frances Densmore

“These are called ‘Juneberries’ by the Chippewa and are found abundantly in their country. They are considered the simplest form of refreshment. ‘Take some Juneberries with you,’ is a common saying among the Chippewa. A certain song contains the words ‘Juneberries I would take to eat on my journey if I were a son-in-law.’”

Huron H. Smith

The Flambeau Ojibwe knew the smooth Juneberry only as a food, “although some tribes use the bark as a medicine. Juneberries were also dried for winter use, the Indians often preferring them to blueberries.” The Pillager Ojibwe said the bark was to make a tea for the expectant mother, and the Forest Potawatomi used the root bark for a tonic. “There is no record of its medicinal use by white men.”

Charles Sprague Sargent

A tree sometimes forty to fifty feet high; the flowers “appear from the end of March at the south to the end of May at the north when the leaves are grown to nearly one third of their size”; the fruit, which ripens in early summer, is sweet and edible, dark purple with a slight glaucous bloom. The wood is heavy, exceedingly hard, and satiny, occasionally used for the handles of tools; and American pomologists had lately paid some attention to the cultivation and improvement of the juicier swamp form.