Fireweed and bumblebees

tea from the side of the road

Fireweed is an amazing plant. It grows all over the northern hemisphere, preferring the cooler latitudes and altitudes. In North America we call it fireweed because it moves in quickly after a forest fire, filling in the damage with new growth and long roots that break up soil. In the UK it’s nickname is bombweed because it appeared so quickly in bomb sites during the blitz. One of it’s names in Ojibwe is aamoo-waabigwan. Aamoo means bee. Waabigwan means flower. So, aaamoo-waabighwan: bee flower. That will become meaningful as you read on. It is also called ozhaashijiibik, which has to do with its roots. But it is as aamoo-waabighwan that I came to know it.

The seeds have silky hairs like milkweed that allow it to be carried on the wind. Between the thousands of seeds each plant produces and the persistent underground roots, a single plant can form multiple patches in short order. After the devastation of a fire or a blitz, these plants are not only beautiful and prolific, but edible and medicinal for bees as well as humans and other creatures. In the spring you can eat the shoots, in the late summer the leaves and flowers make tea. The pith inside the stem can be eaten as well and it has medicinal uses too for everything from infections to inflammation. The blossoms can be made into jelly, and of course bees make honey. For pollinators and more, that prolific food source is a critical part of rebuilding the ecosystem.

It is for all of these characteristics that we chose fireweed for a foundation I co-founded in 2021, the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation which collects rent from settlers and redistributes it to Indigenous people and organizations. Indigenous people also spread quickly through root and seed. We are one of the fastest growing populations in Canada and the US, and just as transformative.

A couple of years ago my oldest son and his partner planned to meet us in Lac Seul for a few days. She has family in Thunder Bay she didn’t mind having a chance to visit and he likes to go home periodically. As we were driving along the highway north of Thunder Bay we saw them on the side of the road, knee deep in plants with pink and purple blossoms. Later on when we were setting up our campsite he explained that he was picking fireweed and showed me where some was growing near our campsite. It makes a nice tea, the blossoms add some sweetness to it. We were late in the season so there wasn’t a lot left to pick, maybe a month’s worth. Probably less.

Fast forward to last year’s camping trip out east. We went to the Gaspe Peninsula, travelling along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River past Taddousaac and then taking the ferry from Les Escoumins to Trois Pistoles and on to the Gaspe. Beginning in Trois Pistoles I started to see fireweed everywhere and picked some every chance I got, often pulling over when I saw those swathes of pink and purple.

It was on one of the trails at Forillon National Park that I realized bees liked fireweed as much as I do and I learned to pick carefully. I rush so much about some things which is odd when you consider how often I waste time or drag out other things. Maybe it was the size of the field I wanted to pick from, maybe it was the gathering storm clouds. At any rate, I picked quickly, stripping the tops of plants looking ahead to the next place I wanted to pick. I don’t wild-harvest often, but when I do gather plants in the wild I follow a principle suggested by Robin Wall Kimmerer in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. I don’t pick from the first patch I encounter, and I take less than half of what I find. This avoids over-picking, if you only come across one patch it gets left alone and what you do find doesn’t get picked clean.

I got stung.

You’d think that the first time I felt a buzzing in my hand after stripping a stem I’d be more careful but no. I apologized, released the little bee, and continued on what I was doing. The next one to be rudely grabbed was not so kind and I got stung. I apologized again and picked more carefully. I wasn’t going to pick the whole field anyway and if it started to rain, well, as my friend’s mother used to say. I’m not made of sugar so I won’t melt.

Manidoons

In Ojibwe the word for bee is aamoo, but the word for the larger category of insect or bug is manidoons. Manidoo is spirit and putting the ‘ns’ on the end creates a diminutive. So insects are little spirits. When my son took a job picking wild blueberries the crew leader told them that if there was a bear in the blueberry patch it was the bear’s patch now and to find another. If we’re going to show that kind of respect to a bear, surely the little spirits deserve some as well. There was a time when I was in the forest with my dogs, going through some tall grass and a cloud of bees blocked our path. I waited for them to move out of the way and they didn’t so we turned and went another way. A few moments later I heard loud crashing where I had wanted to go, somebody big and unseen had been there and the aamoowag had been good to us.

I hadn’t been good to those bees while picking that fireweed. After getting stung I moved more slowly, paid attention to whether or not the flowers had bees in them, and left those ones alone. Add that to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s principles for wild harvesting: skip the first patch, take less than half, if somebody else is already harvesting it’s their patch now. And little spirits can choose whichever plants they want.

I had to buy some fireweed tea recently, found a crunchy granola stores carrying an Indigenous brand of tea not too far from a church that had invited me to talk with them about kindship and belonging. It was good timing too because we just finished the fireweed tea we brought back from the east coast that we mixed about half and half with the mint I have all over my yard, but that’s another story.

baamaapii