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Bouncing Bog-berries (Cranberries and Blueberries)

© Audrey Stallsmith

"Your nose is as red as that cranberry sauce," answered Fan.
Old-fashioned Girl--Louisa M. Alcott
Where fires thou find'st unraked and hearths unswept,
There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry.
The Merry Wives of Windsor--Shakespeare

One of the joys of Thanksgiving is successfully plopping jellied cranberry sauce, whole, out of the can onto the serving plate. Tradition holds that cranberries were eaten at the first Thanksgiving in 1621, though probably not in such quivery form!

Although the eastern Indian tribes knew the fruit as "sassamanesh" or "ibini" ("bitter berry"), the Pilgrims dubbed it "craneberry," the blossom being thought to resemble the head of that particular bird. Cranberries did not become a popular part of the holiday feast, however,until Grant had them served to his troops in 1864--just a year after Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving an official national holiday. Apparently the soldiers liked the piquant flavor. Sailors did too, since the berries prevented scurvy on long voyages.

Cranberries were sometimes also known as "bounce-berries," because good ones will bounce, while rotton or damaged ones won't. This was supposedly discovered by a gentleman who kept his in his loft and had to pour them down the stairs! Cranberries are still sorted by bounceboard seperators.

There are only three fruits native to America, and two of them--cranberry and blueberry--belong to the vaccinium family. Native Americans made good use of both, pounding the dried berries with jerky and suet to form pemmican cakes and dying their robes in cranberry or blueberry hues.

The two vaccinium "brothers" are at home in the acidic, damp, but well-drained soil near swamps. (Commercial cranberry bogs are flooded only at harvest-time and during the winter.)

I vividly remember picking wild blueberries as a child. We kids would belt plastic milk pitchers to our waists to leave both hands free for stripping the succulent fruits from their bushes. Since the wild berries are much smaller (and darker) than the domestic types, gathering them took time. We would inevitably eat half of our harvest and complain loudly, through blue-stained lips, about the mosquitoes whining around our heads. A sibling who found a good bush would, however, fall suspiciously silent--not wanting to share his or her bounty!

Although North America is the major exporter of both cranberries and blueberries, some wild varieties such as the ligonberry (vaccinium vitis-idaea) and the bilberry (vaccinium myrtillus) grow in Europe too. The bilberry is also known as whortleberry, whinberry, trackleberry, or "hurts." Perhaps the latter name is a reference to the fruit's bruise-like color. The author of Wuthering Heights mentions bilberries climbing over the churchyard wall from the moor. Whinberry, in fact, means "furzeberry."

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