Bog Labrador Tea

Ledum groenlandicum (or Rhododendron groenlandicum) Origin: New Jersey Improvement Status: Cultivated wild material Seeds per packet: ~35 BOTANICAL SAMPLE - NOT GERMINATION TESTED Life cycle: Perennial Bog Labrador Tea is a beautiful perennial shrub very closely related to rhododendrons (some sources now classify it as a species of rhododendron). It has very small white flowers and azalea-like leaves with downturned edges creating a space underneath each leaf filled with a delicate orange fuzz. The dried leaves have long been used to make tea, noted for its mildly sedative effect and as a cure for winter colds. Indigenous peoples are said to have used it this way, as well as using it as a flavoring for meat. Commonly found in bogs and peatlands in boreal forests, its range extends across Canada and well into the northern reaches of the United States, including Washington and Oregon, the upper Midwest, and New England, with a few disjunct populations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, a