Chapter 4.16.1
4.16.1 Soapberries - Shepherdia argentea
Aiden Currah, University of Guelph, Canada
Suggested citation for this chapter.
Currah,A. (2022) Fleshy Fruits. In The Student Encyclopedia of Canadian Indigenous Foods. Editor, M.N. Raizada, University of Guelph, Canada. http://www.firstnationsfoods.org/
Introduction
The Soapberry (S. argentea) plant is a medium sized deciduous shrub that stands around 2 meters or 6 feet tall. The soapberry plant has smooth, green, round, or oval shaped leaves and have a scurf on the bottom of the leaves and twigs. The flowers of the Soapberry plant are small and green making them hard to notice. They tend to blossom in the early spring before the leaves open up. The berries grow either in groups or singularly and they are small, round and are most often red but can also be orange and spotted. The Soapberry plant needs lots of sunlight and grows better with higher amounts of rainfall and well drained soil. To grow these plants, you should plant them in June or July under about 3cm of soil. This will lead to the best germination results. After they germinate, move the plant to a larger container or flower bed to allow for sufficient root growth and to prevent the plants from crowding each other out.
The soapberry plant is most commonly found in British Columbia, the coast of Newfoundland, the southern parts of the Yukon and in the northwestern United States including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The plant usually grows in the deep woods, thickets, and dense forests but they are also found growing on the costal shores in northern California and newfoundland and Labrador.
The berries typically ripen in July and august. The berries were typically harvested by hitting the branches with a stick repeatedly and letting the berries fall into a basket waiting below. This method was more efficient then individually picking the berries and allowed people to collect more berries faster. The berries are very bitter when you first harvest them, so they need to be processed before you consume them. After the berries are processed, usually by washing them and then either letting them dry out in the sun or by being boiled, the berries can than be eaten in many different ways. One of the most common way is “Indian ice cream.” They whip the berries with water and sugar to turn it into an ice cream like substance that is served chilled and is often available at parties and other social gathering such as pow wows. They also can be dried by laying them out on dried grass or they are boiled on large hot rocks. Sometimes the berries were mixed into other meals such as cooked moose or bison liver. Today, they are usually stored in water and used to make a lemonade style drink. Today, eating soapberries is still a tradition and is often given as a gift.
A few groups of indigenous people that used and consumed the Soapberries were the Chipewyan, the Tanaina, the Inuit, the Stoney, and the Fisherman Lake Slave people. These people would use a variety of different methods to process the berries and used them for different things depending on where they lived. Most groups would snap off branches from the plant and bring them back to their camp. They would then stick them in the ground and let them dry. Them they would eat them as desert or as candy. They would sometimes coat them in sugar or syrup to make them extra sweet or turn it into “Indian ice cream. People also used to have soapberry fights. You would run around with a basket of berries of a dish of whipped berries and throw them at others. This would lead to a very sticky mess that often concluded the end of a celebration or party.
Soapberries can grow anywhere but they grow more commonly in interior provinces and states than on the coast. Some different areas grow better quality berries and have higher yields. This has led to the berries being traded all over parts of the world to acquire different flavors. The soapberry is also known by other names in different regions of the world. For example, the Skidegate Haida name for soapberries come from the Tsimshian tribe. The soap berry is also traded for other commodities such as the seaweed, clams, cockles, animal products such as fish, and even clothing. Indian ice cream is thought to have originated in British Columbia. The tribe then brought this treat down to the northwestern United States, specifically states like Washington and Montana.
limitations
Some of the limitations with the Soapberry include deadly toxins, harvesting and processingissues and yields and Productivity. The soapberry has recently had an issue with an outbreak inAsia. In an article by a team of scientist, they recently discovered that“Methylenecyclopropylglycine (MCPG) and hypoglycin A (HGA) are naturally occurring aminoacids found in some soapberry fruits. Fatalities have been reported worldwide as a result of HGA ingestion, and exposure to MCPG has been implicated recently in the Asian outbreaks ofhypoglycemic encephalopathy” (Sanford,2018). There is also a problem with harvesting these berries. They are small and hidden under the leaves of the plant, making access fromautomated equipment hard. So, most soapberries are picked by hand. This means that youneed multiple workers to work long hours which can be a challenge to find as people arelooking for less labour-intensive jobs. The plant also doesn’t have great yields. Since thesoapberry is a fruit; you are only harvesting the small berries at the end and not the entire plantsuch as the roots, leaves or stems. This means that producing these berries at a high volume is difficult without sufficient land and there can be waste as some of he berries can be missed by the workers through human error or damaged in the harvesting processes.
References
1.Buerki, S., Forest, F., Acevedo-Rodríguez, P., Callmander, M. W., Nylander, J. A. A., Harrington, M., Sanmartín, I., Küpfer, P., & Alvarez, N. (2009, January 30). Plastid and nuclear DNA markers reveal intricate relationships at subfamilial and tribal levels in the Soapberry family (Sapindaceae). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790309000177.
2.Isenburg, S. L. (n.d.). Soapberry toxins. Login. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://ocul-gue.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_webofscience_primary_000433335900056CitationCount&context=PC&vid=01OCUL_GUE%3AGUELPH&lang=en&search_scope=OCULDiscoveryNetwork&adaptor=Primo+Central&tab=OCULDiscoveryNetwork&query=any%2Ccontains%2Csoapberry&offset=0.
3.Sanford AA;Isenberg SL;Carter MD;Mojica MA;Mathews TP;Harden LA;Takeoka GR;Thomas JD;Pirkle JL;Johnson RC;, A. A. (n.d.). Quantitative HPLC-MS/ms analysis of toxins in soapberry seeds: Methylenecyclopropylglycine and hypoglycin a. Food chemistry. Retrieved November 17, 2021, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853400/.