The cranberry: A small berry with a big story
Hello all, I am the cranberry, the “berry” most important flavor of fall. Don’t believe me? Let me explain, because my role at your Thanksgiving table is by no means small.
I have a few forms, but you might know me best as the large cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon. Some humans also call me the American cranberry or bear berry. I wonder what the bears call me?
We native plants have called North America home since before humans were even documenting us. We are used for food for humans and animals, as well as medicine and even clothing dye.
Who are you calling shorty?
I grow long trailing shrubby vines with slender stems growing up, called uprights. I don’t have to do much growing to reach my full height of about 6 inches.
What I don’t have in height, I make up for in beauty! I have small evergreen leaves. Not to brag, but my leaves that stay green for a while also make me a perfect addition to your winter party as well.
In the spring, beautiful pink flowers bloom along my uprights. These blooms are what inspired the name “cranberry” that early settler colonists gave to me. They thought that my flowers resembled the face of a crane. Over time, the language changed and eventually “craneberry” became “cranberry.” Do you see the resemblance?
After the flowers, the small red fruit you are familiar with appears in the fall.
Beloved by all
Indigenous Nations have long used me for remedies, dyes, drinks and food and continue to enjoy and use me today. One of those foods is pemmican, a sort of power bar of its time. Made from dried meat, fat and cranberries, this bar was a vital food source when other food was scarce.
Am I solely responsible for keeping hundreds of Native peoples and European fur traders alive during the cold winter months? Maybe. I lost count.
As more settlers moved to this continent, more people enjoyed my tart fruits. I became a side dish for different meats and even baked into pies and tarts.
Rather than picking my berries off the vine, you might have purchased a variation of me from a store. You are just one of many. Humans have been growing me since the early 1800s, although I have only been shoved into a can for the last hundred years.
Cranberry beds
Speaking of cans, if you have seen me in a commercial, you might think that I grow in the water, but that is not the case! It is true that I like the water. In fact, colder wetlands in the northern hemisphere called bogs are where you can naturally find me growing. That is because bogs and marshes and similar wetlands have acidic soil, which provides the type of nutrients I need to grow short and strong.
Humans love me so much that they do not wait to see what is growing in the wild; they plant me in fields just like my cousin, the blueberry. The image of commercially grown cranberries floating in a pool is from the harvesting process.
Humans don’t bother to pick each berry by hand, so they use a process called “wet harvesting.” When my berries are ripe, farmers flood the beds I am planted in. And guess what, I float! Water reels churn the water and that movement separates me from my vine. All the floating fruit is then collected, processed and sold.
