Black twinberry (Lonicera involucrata), found in moist forest, clearings, and river banks (and in abundance along the Juan de Fuca trail), is not the choicest-tasting berry of the bunch. They have been named 'monster food', are purported by some to be posionous, and taboos have been developed against eating them. A Kwakwaka'wakw belief held that eating the berries would render a person unable to speak, and some Interior nations purported that it could drive a person crazy. The berries are eaten by other mammals and birds in large quantity though, and have also been named 'raven food' on the coast and 'grizzly berries' in the Interior.

The deciduous shrub, a few metres high, can be recognized by its paired flowers which look like little yellow bells growing in fused bracts. They produce shiny black berries that are about 1 cm across. While it may not make for a nice snack, the plant still offers an eclectic assortment of other values (beyond, of course, its immeasurable integral worth). People with hair have rubbed crushed berries on it to counter dandruff or greying, while people without hair have rubbed the same on their scalp to counter baldness. Some whalers drank a tea made with twinberry bark to ease the afflictions of enforced sexual abstinence, and new mothers have rubbed this same tea onto their breasts to stimulate milk flow.

Leaves and sticks can be boiled and applied to swellings, sores, scabs, and broken bones; chewed leaves were applied externally to itchy skin, boils, and gonorrheal scars; and a decoction of leaves or inner bark was used as an eyewash. A tea from the berries is said to cleanse the stomach and purify the body, and the crushed berries themselves produce a black dye. The stems have been used as building and crafting material (sometimes adorned with the aforementioned black dye) and the hollow stem makes for a nice drinking straw. Perhaps the most common human use associated with black twinberry is as an ornamental plant, due not only to its aesthetic appeal but to its resistance to air pollution.