American spikenard

Photo: Urban — Public domain · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Ripe berries, cooked, are used for jam or wine — sources genuinely disagree on how palatable they are raw, and eating a quantity of them raw can cause digestive upset, so cook them. The heavily aromatic root is not a food; it's used medicinally and, historically, as a root-beer flavoring.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Herb

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late summer

Mature size

Herbaceous perennial 1–2 m tall by up to 1.2 m wide

Light

Shade to partial

Soil pH

5.5–7.0

Environment

Woodland

Native range

Most of eastern North America, west into Utah, Arizona and the Mogollon Mountains of New Mexico — moist forest margins, riparian thickets and mountain streambanks, generally 1,000–2,500 m in the western part of its range.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Herbaceous — dies back each winter and rebuilds 1–2 m of top growth in a single season.

Spacing

120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Very large twice- or thrice-compound leaves up to 1 m long, the individual leaflets ovate, heart-shaped at the base and finely toothed, on a smooth green stem.

Root system

Thick, fleshy, intensely aromatic taproot and rhizome — the part traditionally dug for the root beer and cough-syrup flavouring the plant is known for.

Fruit description

Small, dark purple-black berries in large branched clusters

Propagation

Seed (soak 24 hours, then about 8 weeks cold stratification — germinates in 2–3 weeks once stratified), or root cuttings.

Pollination

Hermaphrodite and self-fertile — a single plant sets fruit unaided. Pollinated by bees working the small greenish umbels in midsummer.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.