The bear root plant is Ligusticum porteri, the same plant sold as osha. It grows high in the mountains, in meadows and along forest edges, and it is easy to miss until late summer, when white flower heads rise above a clump of lacy leaves. Most people searching for it have heard the name and the bear story and want to know what the living plant looks like. Here is the plant as you would meet it on a slope in Chihuahua, from the leaves down to the root that gives it its name.
What does osha root look like above ground?
A mature plant stands about 50 to 130 cm tall, according to its Wikipedia entry, and established stands in New Mexico, Colorado and Utah can reach six or seven feet. The tops die back each winter and come up again from the same root in spring.
The leaves are finely divided, a lot like flat-leaf parsley grown large. The Pollinator Partnership's species profile puts the leaf segments at 5 to 40 mm wide, with the biggest leaves at the base of the plant. Where the leaf stalks meet the root, the bases often carry a reddish tint.
Flowers come in late summer. Each one is tiny, 2 to 5 mm across with five white petals, and they sit together in flat-topped compound umbels, the umbrella shape you see on dill and wild carrot. After flowering the plant sets reddish, ribbed seeds about 5 to 8 mm long. They drop close to the parent plant. Wind and animals do little to carry them away, which is one reason osha grows in patches.
What the root looks like
Dig down and the root is the giveaway. The skin is dark, wrinkled and chocolate brown. Around the top of the root sits a collar of old, dead leaf bases that looks like coarse brown hair, so a dug root resembles a small, shaggy animal. Cut it open and the inside is yellowish.
Then there is the smell. People who know the plant describe it as spicy celery, and Wikipedia's entry adds a note of butterscotch. On the Permies forum, where foragers trade identification notes, one member put it this way: the fragrance is the confirmation, whatever else you learn. Bruised leaves carry the same scent.
Ligusticum porteri belongs to the carrot family
Osha sits in Apiaceae, the family of carrot, parsley, celery and dill. Its closest kitchen relative is lovage, which is why one of its English names is Porter's lovage. The celery note in the root comes from aromatic compounds common across the family, and the 2018 American Herbal Pharmacopoeia monograph on oshá names lovage and angelica as the easier-to-grow cousins.
The plant has collected a long list of names. Hispanic ranchers in New Mexico call it chuchupate. The Rarámuri of Chihuahua call it wasía. The Lakota name, mato tapejuta, means bear medicine, and "bear root" is the plain English version of the same idea. If you have seen both names on labels and wondered whether they are two plants, our post on bear root vs osha root settles it.
Osha stopped more than half the growth of the TB bacterium at the lowest concentration tested.
Where the bear root plant grows
Osha lives at roughly 1,500 to 3,500 m, in rich, moist soil under pine-oak woodland up to spruce-fir forest, and in open meadows and rocky slopes beside those trees. The Pollinator Partnership profile traces its range from Wyoming south through the high mountains into the Mexican states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Mexico's national flora database at UNAM adds Durango.
In Mexico the plant belongs to the Sierra Madre Occidental. The Rarámuri live in the Sierra Tarahumara, which the US National Park Service describes as part of the Sierra Madre Occidental in southwestern Chihuahua, and Rarámuri families brewed the root as a tea for stomach pain and fever. Mara's Bear Root is a mountain plant of Northern Mexico, from these same ranges.
The bear part of the name is older than any label. Several Southwestern peoples called osha a gift of the bear. The Diné credit the medicine to the bear, and the observer Shawn Sigstedt watched Kodiak bears chew the root into a mash and rub it into their fur. A medicine bundle found in Utah, dated 200 to 600 years old, held osha root.
Ten years in the ground before anyone digs it
Osha grows slowly. Plants are often more than ten years old by the time the root is dug. The seed needs a long cold period before it will sprout, and United Plant Savers notes that seedlings are rarely seen in the wild. Growers who tried to raise it outside its home mountains have mostly failed, likely because the root depends on fungi in its native soil.
That is why almost every root on the market is wild-harvested, and why United Plant Savers lists osha as "At-Risk" with a score of 48. The same group records informal reports of small stands, 100 plants or fewer, vanishing after heavy digging.
There is also a lookalike. Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) has the same lacy leaves and white umbels, and it is toxic, so the plant is one to admire in the meadow and leave to experienced harvesters.
A dropper instead of a shovel
You don't need to find a stand above 2,000 m to have this plant in your day. A finished tincture puts the root in a 50 ml bottle on your desk. Nobody in your house has to tell osha from hemlock, and no stand loses a plant to a weekend dig.
Put a dropper under your tongue and the root is right there. The taste is earthy and warming, with a sharp, celery-like bite that tells you which family this plant comes from. Hold it 20 to 30 seconds and swallow, or stir it into water, tea, juice or a morning smoothie. At 1 to 2 droppers a day, a bottle lasts 30 to 50 days.
The glass counts too. Dark amber glass is a step in the right direction, but the gold standard is dark Miron glass, which is what Bear Root sits in. It keeps light off the extract for the life of the bottle. Simple ingredients: premium quality extract. It is a tincture, so the root is extracted in alcohol.
Bear Root – Osha Root Tincture
50 ml dropper bottle. Ligusticum porteri from the mountains of Northern Mexico.
Add to bagFor the full story of the root, from Zuni and Comanche tradition to the 2008 University of Texas at El Paso lab work on the Rarámuri root, read our osha root guide.
Bear Root considerations
Contains alcohol. Not recommended during pregnancy. If you're nursing or taking medication, ask your doctor before using it.
Questions people ask
Is the bear root plant the same as osha?
Yes. Bear root, osha, chuchupate and Porter's lovage are all names for Ligusticum porteri.
What does osha root smell like?
Spicy celery, with a sweet note some people compare to butterscotch. The smell is strong enough that foragers use it to confirm the plant.
Does osha grow in Mexico?
Yes. UNAM's flora database lists it in Chihuahua, Durango and Sonora, in the high country of the Sierra Madre Occidental.
Can you grow osha in a garden?
Rarely. The seed needs a long cold period, and attempts to grow it outside its native mountains have mostly failed, so nearly all osha is still wild-harvested.