“Looking at this collection from over 40 years ago, I can remember exactly where I made it; I can almost still smell the sagebrush! I was with my friend and teacher, the late Sam Mitchell from Xaxl’ep (Fountain). A speaker of the Stl’atl’imx (St’at’imc) Interior Salish language, Sam was an expert in all aspects of his territory. As part of my doctoral research, he was sharing his amazing knowledge of different varieties of Saskatoon berry (Amelanchier spp.; Klinkenberg 2015) called stsekwum, with me. These included: spekpek, ‘white-white’; swelhkwa7-u7sa7 “red-berry”; stl’exel’us “sweet berry”, stsekwum-ul “real/original saskatoon” and, finally, the one in this collection, nek’nakw’-ukw’sa7 “rotten berry”. Each variety had its own characteristics of growth form, habitat, and taste, colour, seed size and juiciness. This one, he explained, had large seeds and tended to rot quickly, so was not very popular.

Other Interior Salish First Peoples – and some coastal groups – also recognized multiple varieties of the culturally important fruit. I was so fortunate to have been able to document some of these through collaborative botanical research with my Indigenous colleagues, as a way of highlighting the rich ethnobotanical heritage we have here in British Columbia

Nancy Turner, Distinguished Professor and Hakai Professor in Ethnoecology at UVic