Food:  Fruit when ripe may be cooked to make jelly.   Juice: Cook fruit and extract juice with a sieve or panty hose, cheesecloth and dilute and sweeten to taste.  Berries may be dried, then pounded to powder or paste and cooked like hot cereal.

B. vulgaris L.:  Micmac, Mohegan and other tribes used pounded bark on mouth sores and sore gums, sore throat.  Placed in mouth pounded roots induce salivation and reported healing.  Mohegan used decoction of berries for reducing fevers.  Shinnecock used the bitter leaves in decoction as a liver tonic.  Also see: Oregon Grape.

Traditional use: root bark in decoction or infusion as diuretic; for urinary tract infections, gout, diarrhea, arthritis.  Jelly or jam of fresh berries used as laxative or cathartic, also as an appetite stimulant;  Fruit also as a wine or alcohol tincture for treating infections, colds.

Tea (infusion) typically made with from one to two teaspoons of crushed ripe berries to one cup of water.

Chemistry:  anthocyans; malic and acidic acid; chlorogenic acid and alkaloids: berberine; (trace isoquinoline alkaloids).