From Eat the Weeds and Other Things Too website
By Green Deane
Blueberries, or Huckleberry’s Kin
Vaccinium darrowii is redder than Vaccinium myrsinites
Vacciniums: Am I Blue?
Blueberrying was a family tradition. The only debate was did
you pick them clean, or did you pick leaves, bugs and all then clean
the haul later? My mother preferred the clean method, so clean it was.
Why did she prefer the clean-picking method? Because as a child she and
her mother visited a friend who had just finished picking a lot of
blueberries. My mother was asked if she wanted some, she said yes a big
bowl. The bowl of blueberries were delivered then milk poured on them.
That caused all the twigs, leaves and bugs to float to the surface
making the berries not possible to eat. We picked clean.
My
most enduring memory, however, was when I was 14 and had just started
high school. I was picking away late one season on a Sunday afternoon
when a bee came up and stung me right on the end of my nose. Yes, it
did swell up. Yes, I did look ridiculous. Yes, I was forced to go
to school the next day, putting Cyrano de Bergerac to shame.
We
berried in two very different areas with two very different kind of
blueberries. Low-bush blueberries were extremely common, covering huge
fields, hundreds of acres. The fields were burned every year to ensure
a good crop of blueberries, which prefers poor acid soil and ashes. In
late summer rows were marked by string. Pickers with hand rakes would
come in and strip a field in a couple of days. They always focused on
the productive center of the field, leaving the edges. We used to raid
those edges on the weekend, collecting quarts of ignored fruit. But,
there were other blueberries as well.
High on a ridge, west of
the Libby Road where it intersects with the Witcher Road, in Pownal
Maine, there’s a north south granite ledge showing here and there. On
that ledge were the best specimens of high-bush blueberries I’ve ever
seen. Tall shrubs, they were six to eight feet tall and loaded with
large, sweet blueberries. Picking was fast, if there weren’t bears
around, which brings me to a short story about my Great Aunt Myrt, born
in the 1880’s. She loved blueberries.
Great Aunt Myrtie May Putney circa 1900
Like
all eight of her siblings born in the late 1800s, Myrt caught scarlet
fever when she was in her teens and as a consequence was nearly stone
deaf. That presented some problem, of course, but life went on. One day
she was out with other members of the family picking blueberries. While
they were picking a bear came along and started eating the berries
right next to Myrt. Everyone but Myrt apparently saw the bear and moved
away. Myrt kept right on picking. As you may imagine, the mostly deaf
members of the family trying to get Myrt’s attention by yelling did not
work nor did it scare the bear. Myrt was focused on filling her berry
bucket. When her bucket was finally full she left the patch and joined
the others.
“Didn’t you see that bear?” my grandfather shouted?
“Yes,” said Myrt, shouting back, “but I wasn’t going to let that damned
bear have my blueberries.” Myrt, a feisty, tall, good-looking woman,
lived into her 90s. No doubt the healthful blueberries helped.
When
picking off high bush blueberries it was not unusual to come home with
a washtub full of them. You could eat fistfuls of blueberries and still
have gallons left. In fact, the only way we ever ate them were either
fresh or in muffins. Gallons of blueberries in the frig was a good
feeling. The quantities of blueberries hereabouts are more modest, and
sporadic.
Vaccinium myrsinites, dwarf blueberry.
The most common blueberry locally where I live now is Vaccinium myrsinites.
There are no fields of them or even large patches that I’ve ever seen,
always just a few short bushes here and there, usually around 18 inches
high though they can get to three feet. Another local is the Vaccinium stamineum,
Deerberry. It’s taste varies from tart to sweet. Deerberry is the
easiest of all the blueberries to identify with leaves are egg-shaped
and whitish underneath. The fruit can be green to deep ruby when ripe.
The high bush blueberry of my youth, Vaccinium corymbosum
doesn’t quite get to Florida, or if so one foot across the state line.
There is, however, a high-bush blueberry in Florida that grows to 20
feet or more, the Sparkleberry, aka Farkleberry, Vaccinium arboreum. It is edible but not too palatable. The bottom of its leaves have a net of gold-colored veins.
As
you may infer, numerous birds and mammals like the blueberries. Among
the creatures that like them are grouse, partridge, quail, robins,
blackbirds, thrushes, chipmunks, deer, elk, rabbit and
bear. Deer are quite fond of the leaves, a point not lost on
hunters. Medicinally, decoctions of the leaves have been used for sore
throats and diarrhea but if too strong can be toxic.
The high
bush blueberry of my youth, Vaccinium corymbosum doesn’t quite get to
Florida, or if so one foot across the state line. There is, however, a
high-bush blueberry in Florida that grows to 20 feet or more, the
Sparkleberry, aka Farkleberry, Vaccinium arboreum. It is edible but not
too palatable. The bottom of its leaves have a net of gold-colored
veins.
The experts tell us there are no toxic five-point crown berries.
Vaccinium myrsinites is said vak-SIN-ee-um mur-sin-EYE-teez. Myrsinites is from Greek and means looking like the myrtle. What vaccinium
means is more of a debate. One idea is that it goes back to a
prehistoric European language called Thraco Pelagian, a precursor to
Greek. A competing idea is that it is from the Latin word “vacca”
meaning cow (frankly, both could be right since half of Latin is
bastardized Greek, and the other half is misappropriated
Etruscan.) The cow berry, Vaccinium vitis-idaea
was common where plant namer Linnaeus was born, so…. we’ll never know.
No doubt blueberries have been eaten for thousands of years and can be
found in all lands circling the north pole then south. The oldest find
is from a Bronze-Age grave in Denmark, a few thousand years ago.
Two-hundred year old frozen blueberries have also been found in
Northern Canada. In the Heath family, all Vacciniums
— all 450 or so species — have a five-pointed, star-shaped calyx that
remains on the fruit. Some Native Americans believed that in times of
starvation “the Great Spirit sent the star berries down from the night
of heaven to feed the children.”
Green Deane’s “Itemized” Plant Profile
Identification: V. myrsinites
is a small shrub, one to three feet, leaves alternate, ovate to
elliptic, to 3/4 of an inch long, sometimes with fine, sharp teeth and
spine-tipped. Leathery. Young grayish foliage often purple tinged.
Flowers red or red-purple, in small compact clusters, bell-shaped,
berries blue or blackish, round. V. darrowii looks similar but the base of the blossom is redder as are the tips of the blossoms.
Time of year: Blooms in late May, fruit in the summer, June to August depending on area
Environment: A small bush with small fingernail sized leaves in saw palmetto prairies and pine flat woods
Method of preparation: Uses nearly too numerous to mention, jelly to wine, pies to confit, full of antioxidants.
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