Soopolallie (Shepherdia canadensis) is a woody deciduous shrub found in open forests.    It is sometimes called buffalo berry.   It is a nitrogen-fixing plant which grows from a long taproot to a height of 1-3 m.   Small opposite leaves are green on top and brownish/light- colored and hairy below.   The bark is covered with small scaly patches.   Small yellow flowers have 4 triangular fused lobes.    Each shrub produces male or female flowers and the pollination/fertilization process requires insects to visit at least two shrubs.    The flowers appear in spring, before the leaves.    They are mainly pollinated by flies.  These are female flowers (one pistil, no stamens) in the image provided:

In summer red berries form.    They are juicy, but bitter.   Traditional people collected the berries and mixed them with other berries, then stirred them to create a foamy mix for a dessert dish for consumption (soapberry – soopalallie).     There were other herbal uses of the berries by various groups.

The berries have saponins, and are mildly toxic, but are rich in iron.   We have eaten small amounts of the berries each summer.   Each berry has a single seed for dispersal by animals and birds (which we spit out).

Soopalallie can be found along lakeshores and rivershores, but also in a variety of habitats which have sufficient moisture in alkaline soils.     We have seen people harvesting the berries in the summer for traditional meals several times.    The berries are small so this process seems to take hours.

We enjoy seeing the bright red berries in summer as we hike the trails on the Interior Plateau.