Calling a plant a weed is a touchy subject. One person’s weed is another person’s beloved wildflower. Take fireweed for example: yes the clouds of fluffy, windblown seeds can travel over huge distances and the fast-spreading roots can take over hundreds of acres of fallow ground in a matter of weeks – but just because they’re tough and itinerant doesn’t mean they’re bad.

Life is about balance, a lesson nature re-teaches us every day. Fireweed’s abundant airborne seeds and speed-demon root system make it the perfect plant for an essential niche: faster than any other plant, fireweed will rapidly colonize the scorched earth left by forest fires – hence its name.
Robust, sun loving and quick-growing, they’ll spring up wherever ground has been disturbed. These tall purple flower spikes are well remembered by Europeans for carpeting bomb sites during World War II. Just one year after Mt. St. Helens exploded, the blackened landscape turned purple with fireweed.

Once its land reclamation and stabilization work is done, balance is naturally restored a few years later when the original forest begins to re-establish itself, crowding out the fireweed.

But while the plant flourishes, there are an amazing range of benefits to be harvested. For First Nations people fireweed provided all three key botanical uses as a food, fiber and medicine. It was widely used to help heal cuts, bruises, boils and rashes. The stems were used to make cords and the puffs from the seeds were mixed with dog hair to weave cloth. For best results in the cooking pot, fireweed is sweet and tasty in the spring, but turns more and more bitter as the plant ages.

Today Canadian researchers have patented one of the chemical compounds in the plant, Oenothein-B, and it is used as an anti-inflammatory and anti-irritant ingredient in skin care products. Work is also being done to determine if it could be helpful as an acne treatment.

In the esoteric world of gourmet honey production, fireweed is one of the most highly sought after flowers. Beekeepers will even truck or fly their bees into an area that has recently burned in order to reap the benefits of the dense carpet of flowers. It has been described as ‘the champagne of honeys’ with a ‘light, delicate nose, a satiny smooth texture and a surprisingly fruity flavor.’

There is something profound about a flower that blooms so abundantly from charred earth. And something special about the people who chose this flower as the symbol of their Territory.