The plants are both low growing evergreen ground covers found on the forest floor, and they both produce small edible berries. Years later combing through foraging guide I learned that confusing Partridgeberry ( Mitchella repens) for Teaberry ( Gaultheria procumbens) is an incredibly common mistake. Either way, I took her word for it, she was the expert after all, and I went around marking them as “teaberry” on my survey. I didn’t think they tasted like nothing, they had a subtle sweetness and mild berry flavor that I quite liked. “Tastes like absolutely nothing,” she said, “and that’s how you know they’re Teaberry ( Gaultheria procumbens).” The first one she showed me was partridgeberry, and she harvested one and had me taste it. No worries, she said, I’d be trained to ID all the plants I needed to know. ![]() I was a 17 year old freshman, and though I knew many wild weeds, I’d rarely spent time in dense woodlands. I had a college work study job as a field assistant to post doc researcher, and the field work was identifying wild plants, surveying their abundance. Partridgeberry was one of the first plants I foraged in the Northeast, though at the time I didn’t know it’s proper name. ![]() The distinctive berries ripen in late fall, but can be harvested year round as they hang on the plants without spoiling until the following summer. Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is a evergreen creeping ground cover that’s common in woodlands throughout the United States and Canada.
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