Skip to content
Wild10Basecamp

Plants of Alone · № 28

Great Slave Lake East Arm Plant Field Guide

Plants of the East Arm of Great Slave Lake — boreal trees, edibles, toxics and traditional-use species.

Back to plant guides
Great Slave Lake East Arm Plant Field Guide cover№ 28
Region
Great Slave Lake / Frozen (S6–S7)
Country
Canada
Continent
North America
Season
Alone Season 6 & 7
File size
927 KB(0.9 MB)
Read onlineDownload PDF

About this region

Boreal to subarctic — long cold winters, short warm summers, extensive freeze-up on the East Arm.

The East Arm of Great Slave Lake is classic boreal shield country: black spruce and jack pine on thin soils over Precambrian bedrock, with pockets of white spruce and paper birch on richer sites.

Wild foods here are dominated by low-shrub berries — cloudberry, blueberry, lingonberry, and crowberry — along with Labrador tea, which is both a traditional beverage and a useful cold-weather trailside plant. Fires and wetlands drive a mosaic that is unusually productive for bushcraft.

Habitats

  • Boreal shield forest

    Black spruce, jack pine, and lichen mats on shallow soils over bedrock.

  • Peatlands and muskeg

    Sphagnum, Labrador tea, and cloudberry on saturated organic ground.

  • Lake margins and eskers

    White spruce, birch, and berry shrubs on better-drained deposits.

  • Recent burns

    Fireweed, blueberry regrowth, and cyclic willow flush post-wildfire.

Notable species

  • Black sprucePicea mariana

    Pitch and inner bark; dominant on wet ground.

    Tree

  • Jack pinePinus banksiana

    Tree

  • Paper birchBetula papyrifera

    Bark for containers, torches, tinder.

    Material

  • Cloudberry (bakeapple)Rubus chamaemorus

    Edible

  • Labrador teaRhododendron groenlandicum

    Traditional infusion; use conservatively.

    Medicinal

  • LingonberryVaccinium vitis-idaea

    Edible

  • Water hemlockCicuta virosa

    Toxic

Topics

  • great slave lake
  • east arm
  • boreal
  • northwest territories
  • labrador tea
  • cloudberry

Other plant guides