the Monica E. Cavano Wild Blueberry preserve

Sunday, July 23, 2006

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey is where the cranberry and blueberry grow wild.
Like its cousin the cranberry, blueberries thrive on the acid soils of the pinelands.
The wild blueberries in the New Jersey Pine Barrens had long been picked
and used by Native Americans who knew that blueberries were good for relieving stomach problems.
Also called low-bush blueberries, these wild plants grow naturally on acid soils, producing fruit that is quite small on plants that only grow about a foot tall.

Jersey fresh information exchange


Blueberries, like cranberries, bilberries, whortleberries, farkleberries, grouseberries, deerberries, mayberries, cowberries, and huckleberries, belong to the genus Vaccinium (although most botanists break huckleberries out into a seperate subgenus--Gaylussacia). There are dozens of species and varieties of blueberries in the United States and Canada ranginging from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Gulf Coast to the Hudson Bay, but basically there are four groupings of wild blueberries--the dwarf, low (lowbush), high (highbush) and bog (or swamp) blueberry. Their plants can vary from a sprawling groundcover a few inches (dwarf) to three feet in height (lowbush) to large bushes 12 feet high (highbush) or to near-trees as large as 15 feet tall (bog).
blueberry wine
posted by Neil at 5:07 AM

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