PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Ledum / Marsh Labrador Tea
No openly-licensed photo yetWe add Creative-Commons photos from iNaturalist as they’re published.
Ericaceae family

Marsh Labrador Tea Ledum palustre

Native
USDA livestock toxicity rating — not a pet assessment. See the Toxicity detail further down for what's documented.

Marsh Labrador Tea is a perennial shrub native to Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. It grows to 0.5 ft and blooms Jul, with brown fruit.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0) — Drought tolerance · Shade tolerance · Wet-soil tolerance
Soil pH
4.5–7.5
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy)
Hardiness
USDA zone 1+
Drought tolerance
Low
Shade tolerance
Moderate
Wet-soil tolerance
High waterlogging
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Active growth
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Height
0.5 ft
Spacing
6–12 ft apart from USDA planting density
Lifespan
Perennial · short-lived
Foliage
Evergreen needleleaf
Active growth
Spring
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Container
Seed starting
Needs cold stratification a cold-moist spell before it germinates
Seeds ripen
Summer seed-collection / harvest window
Deer browsing
Medium moderately palatable
Resprouts if cut
No
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — A measured High flood (waterlogging) tolerance — handles the periodic standing water of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Bloom
Bloom (the flower's colour)
Bloom · Jul — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~7 caterpillar species

Ledum supports ~7 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a modest genus.

Recorded feeding on Ledum in North America, including:

Celastrina argiolus · Holly Blue ✦ Neofaculta infernella · twirler moth ✦ Eufidonia discospilata · Sharp-Lined Powder Moth Eupithecia gelidata · geometer (inchworm) moth Lithomoia solidaginis · Golden-Rod Brindle Melanchra assimilis · Black Arches
+ 1 more species →
Phyllonorycter ledella · leaf-blotch miner moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0). ✦ = recorded on this exact species.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 172 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Marsh Labrador Tea, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Lingonberry · 79% Dwarf Birch · 73% White Arctic Mountain Heather · 64% Bog Blueberry · 56% Bigelow's Sedge · 55% Tealeaf Willow · 55% Black Crowberry · 47% Tussock Cottongrass · 46%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits
Leaf build Direct fact

We read each species’ measured specific leaf area (leaf area per unit dry weight) from the Global Spectrum dataset and band it: thin & fast (high SLA), medium, or thick & tough (low SLA). The global median is about 10 mm²/mg.

Honest limits: A species-mean from pooled measurements — individual plants vary with light and site. A broad strategy signal, not a precise per-plant figure.

Díaz, S. et al. (2022) The global spectrum of plant form and function: enhanced species-level trait dataset. Scientific Data 9:755.
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (27) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[17] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[18] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[20] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[21] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[24] Stress tolerance — Niinemets & Valladares 2006 (CC0)
[25] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[26] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…