SnowberrySnowberryAnimal Forage and Food Uses Snowberries are an important source of winter food for birds including quail, pheasant and grouse. They are a famine food for humans due to their bitterness and the presence of saponins in the berries. Saponins, a substance also found in many beans, can be destroyed by cooking. Historical Uses Saponins are quite toxic to some animals such as fish. Native Americans put large quantities of snowberries in streams and lakes as a fishing technique to stupefy or kill fish. An infusion of the roots has also been used for inflamed or weak eyes and to aid in convalescence after childbirth.
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Near Pattee Creek, Lewis wrote, he noticed "a species of honeysuckle much in it's growth and leaf like the small honeysuckle of the Missouri only reather larger and bears a globular berry as large as a garden pea and as white as wax. this berry is formed of a thin smooth pellicle which envellopes a soft white musilagenous substance in which there are several small brown seed irregularly scattered or intermixed without any s[h]ell or perceptable membranous covering.--" Within an hour or so he glimpsed, at a distance of about a mile, "two women, a man and some dogs on an eminence immediately before us." It would be a while before he could focus on the natural landscape again. Meanwhile, he had discovered a plant that was new to the scientific community--the snowberry. It was astute of him to recognize its membership in the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae (cap-ri-fol-ee-AY-cee-ee; "a flower shaped like a hat"). Symphoricarpos is a Greek expression meaning "fruits joined together," from the clustered pairs of berries.1 That "musilagenous substance" in the berries, although not poisonous, is mealy and tasteless, and effectually unpalatable to humans, although birds, especially grouse, thrive on it. The red objects in the photo are the buds of its delicate pink trumpet-like flowers.
http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=1926
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