The thimbleberry plant is a vibrant green, thornless bush that can grow up to 3 to 8 ft tall. As its bark ages its green stem turns brown and flaky, Its leaves are serrated, fuzzy, and alternate and are shaped similarly to a maple leaf. They are up to 20 cm wide and have around 5 pointed tipped lobes. 1-2 inch wide white flowers bloom in May which soon turns into the thimbleberries themselves. They are pinky red when ripe and have a domed or thimble like shape sort of like a raspberry. They have either sweet or slightly tart flavor and are seedy which makes them easy to dry. The berries appear in early summer and ripen throughout June and July. (MacKinnon)

Thimbleberries were and are used by indigenous people in numerous ways. The Nuu-chah-nulth dried them along with smoked clams. The Kwakwaka’wakw people picked the berries when unripe and then packed them inside cedar barked bags to ripen. The Nuu-chah-nulth made berry cakes of a mix of thimbleberries and a few other berries. Nuxalk cooked the thimbleberries with berries like wild raspberries and black cap raspberries as they saw thimbleberries as inferior to them. The sweeter berries were usually eaten fresh but the bitter ones were cooked into jams, jellies, pies, among other things. Even the shoots were harvested and eaten. They are gathered in early spring or summer and were eaten raw, dried or cooked into food. Since they don't store well, the shoots were primarily a spring food. They are nutrient rich and are usually juicy, sweet and fruity. The leaves were also used for basket liners for berry picking to prevent stains and berries sticking to the baskets.  (Turner)

Thimbleberries grow in damp shady nutrient rich areas most commonly in low elevations. You can find it in riparian zones, at the edges of roads, the understory of forests and open areas like fields. Its shoots appear during spring and early summer. Thimbleberries grow in damp shady areas on the sides of roads and in open forests and clearings, often forming large dense thickets. They are most common at low elevations along parts of the Quinault coast but can also be found at medium elevations in mountainous areas nearby streams. (Foster and Hobbs)

To easily transplant a thimbleberry plant, dig up its rhizomes (roots) in spring or autumn and move it to wherever you desire, though they thrive best in moist soils. The berries appear in early summer and ripen throughout June and July and the shoots can be gathered in spring (late-sprouting shoots still can sometimes be gathered in summer) Edible shoots are bendable and soft, if they are firm and woody they are no longer edible. (Kloos)