Blueberry

“ There is hardly a more striking feature in the landscape now-a-days than the red patches of blueberry and whortleberry bushes, as seen on a sloping hillside, like islands among the grass, with trees growing in them; or crowning the summit of a bare, brown hill with their somewhat russet liveliness ”

“ What with the fragrance of its leaves, its blossom, and its fruit, it is thrice crowned.
I observed to-day (October 17th) the small blueberry bushes by the path-side, now blood-red, full of white blossoms as in the spring, the blossoms of spring contrasting strangely with the leaves of autumn. The former seemed to have expanded from sympathy with the maturity of the leaves.
Walter Colton in his “California” [61] says, “Age is no certain evidence of merit, since folly runs to seed as fast as wisdom.”
The imagination never forgives an insult. ”

“ In more than one place pink double roses (vagrants from cultivated grounds, no doubt) offered buds and blooms to all who would have them. The cross-vine (Bignonia) , less freehanded, hung its showy bells out of reach in the treetops. Thorn-bushes of several kinds were in flower (a puzzling lot) , and the treelike blueberry (Vaccinium arboreum) , loaded with its large, flaring white corollas, was a real spectacle of beauty. Here, likewise, I found one tiny crab-apple shrub, with a few blossoms, exquisitely tinted with rose-color, and most exquisitely fragrant. ”

“ All this year’s shoots of the swamp blueberry bushes are a restful green, but at the tips these, too, ripen into red, while on the higher ground the black huckle{165}berries and the birches show the same color till the landscape rolls away from you in a warm and cuddley glow that takes the nip out of the wind. Looking on these you know that the pasture cannot be cold, however deep the snows to come or however low the mercury in the thermometer may fall. ”

“ When we see an azalea shrub or even an apple-tree in bloom, we seem to see the very object of its being. The flower calls for no ulterior result, though it may have one; its fruit is in itself. But a blossoming blueberry bush, no matter of what kind, looks like a plant that was made to bear something edible, a plant whose end is use rather than beauty.
If the forenoon had been indolent, the noonday hour was more so. I descended the hill by a way different from any I had yet taken, and found myself at the foot in a public road running through a cultivated valley. ”

“ Answer.—We have never come across anything satisfactory on the cultivation of the blueberry except in Le Bon Jardiniere, which says: "The successful cultivation of the whole tribe of Vacciniums is very difficult. The shrubs do not live long and are reproduced with much difficulty, either by layers or seeds." The blueberry, like the cranberry, appears to be a potash plant, the swamp variety not growing well except where the water is soft, the soil peaty above and sandy below. ”

“ At the present stage of the blueberry industry it is best to begin by transplanting the most promising wild bushes, selecting them for the size, flavor, color and earliness of the berry as well as for the vigor and productiveness of the bush. ”

“ One kind or another flourishes in every soil and locality. The Pennsylvania and Canada blueberries especially in elevated, cool, and airy places, on hills and mountains, in openings in the woods and in sproutlands, the high blueberry in swamps, and the low blueberry in intermediate places, or almost anywhere but in swamps hereabouts. The family thus ranges from the highest mountain tops to the lowest swamps, and forms the prevailing shrub of a great part of New England. ”

“ Blueberries thrive best on soils which are so acid that they are usually considered almost worthless for ordinary agricultural purposes. Blueberry culture, therefore, offers possibilities of profit to individual land-owners in districts in which the general conditions are especially hard and unpromising. ”

“ By burning over the blueberry land in very early spring while the ground is wet, those in charge can keep down the alder, poplars, birches, and other non-money-making growths, and this is taken by the blueberries as their chance. They come right up, and deliver a tremendous crop the first year after the burning. ”

“ By the latter part of August all the river banks were a continuous strawberry bed, a welcome addition to our limited larder, but we never saw a bush of the blueberry (Vaccinium ovaliform) which grows so profusely in the Selkirks. ”

“ Experiments last year in blueberry culture developed luscious berries a half inch in diameter. Possibilities in berry development are almost unlimited, especially by crossing with hardy wild varieties. ”

“ The fruits found in this country are the wild plum, a small sort of wild cherry, wild currants of different kinds, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, brambleberries, blackberries, choke cherries, wild grapes, sand cherries, a delicious fruit which grows on a small shrub near sandy shores, and another blueberry, a fine fruit not larger than a currant, tasting much like a pear and growing on a small tree about the size of a willow. ”

“ Three or four good bushes of the kind offered by most nurseries will keep the family in blueberry pie with little effort on the part of the person who gathers them. Currants and gooseberries are easily grown but have one serious fault. These bushes harbor plant pests that work havoc with evergreens and a number of the ornamental shrubs. ”

“ The rake tears the bushes so, and the berries have to be put through a fanning mill twice to free them from leaves and rubbish. This process fits them for the canners who are not as particular as we wish they were.
The blueberry bush is a kind of Indian. It does not take kindly to gardens and other civilized places. It thrives and yields abundantly if given a chance on its native hillsides, and comes up by the million wherever the cutting of the timber lets in the light. ”

“ It is very much like the dwarf blueberry, but the bush grows sometimes as high as four feet. It is stiff and upstanding and prefers the edge of the woods and sheltered roadsides to the dry open fields. ”

“ BLUEBERRY CAKE 3 tablespoons shortening 1 cup sugar 1 egg 3⁄4 cup milk 13⁄4 cups flour 2 teaspoons Dr. Price's Baking Powder 1⁄2 cups floured blueberries
Cream shortening; add sugar, beaten egg and milk; sift flour and baking powder and add; stir in blueberries. Bake in shallow greased pan in moderate oven 25 to 30 minutes. Serve hot with or without butter.
PRUNE PUFF 4 eggs 1⁄2 cup powdered sugar 1 cup cooked prunes
Whip egg whites to stiff froth; add sugar slowly, beating continually; add prunes which have been stoned and chopped; whip until very light. ”

“ Blue¶bell· (?) , n. (Bot.) (a) A plant of the genus Campanula, especially the Campanula rotundifolia, which bears blue bellÏshaped flowers; the harebell. (b) A plant of the genus Scilla (Scilla nutans) .
Blue¶berry (?) , n. [Cf. Blaeberry.] (Bot.) The berry of several species of Vaccinium, and ericaceous genus, differing from the American huckleberries in containing numerous minute seeds instead of ten nutlets. The commonest species are V. Pennsylvanicum and V. vacillans. V. corymbosum is the tall blueberry.
Blue¶bill· (?) ”

“ Ceaseless are locusts; heavy is the air above the garden, where phlox and strawberry shrub tinge it Persian-sweet. Clustered blueberries are drooped upon the mountains, and in the swamps, sometimes over quicksands, shows the darkling sheen of the high-bush huckleberry. The odor of [42] the balsam fir is drawn out and spread far by the heat. Now the pursued brambles become the blackberry patch. The waste lands shine yellow with the blooms of the marching hardhack. It is the triumph of the sun, and his priest, the white day lily of the cloistral leaf, worships in fragrance. ”

“ Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow. That's always the way with the blueberries, though: There may not have been the ghost of a sign Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine, But get the pine out of the way, you may burn The pasture all over until not a fern Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick, And presto, they're up all around you as thick And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick. ”

“ There had been some berries—but those were all gone.
He didn’t say where they had been. He went on:
‘I’m sure—I’m sure’—as polite as could be.
He spoke to his wife in the door, ‘Let me see,
Mame, we don’t know any good berrying place?’
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.
“If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He’ll find he’s mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We’ll pick in the Mortensons’ pasture this year.
We’ll go in the morning, that is, if it’s clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet. ”

“ In every cranny of the loose stone walls abound the most delicate ferns. Every bank is bright with the wood-strawberry; the gooseberry grows in the hedge; the tall wild cherry, so frequent in Auvergne, drops its dark sweet fruit in your lap as you sit under the trees; but you must climb the woods to find the thick growing raspberry-canes, rose-red with fruit, and the myrtle-like bilberry close set with round blue berries. In autumn, on every moor and height, the heather comes out among the second blossom of the broom. ”

“ Then, in the night we wandered abroad finding lily roots, and the sweet ferns, and camas, and mushrooms, with another visit to the river in the early morning and perhaps a trout to wind up with before the sun drove us under cover again. And above all there was the berry-patch.
The mere smell of a berry-patch at the end of summer, when the sun has been beating down all day, so that the air is heavy with the scent of the cooking fruit, is delicious enough, but it is nothing to the sweetness of the berries themselves. ”

“ Will you go to the Highlands the flocks for to see,
It is health to my jewel to breath this sweet air,
And to pull the blackberries in the forest so fair.
To the Highlands, my jewel, I will not go with thee,
For the road it is long and the hills they are high,
I love those vallies and sweet corn fields
More than all the blaeberries your wild mountains yield.
Our hills they are bonnie when the heather’s in bloom,
It would cheer a fine fancy in the month of june,
To pull the blaeberries and carry them home,
And set them on your table when December comes on. ”

“ BLUEBERRIES, which are not cultivated, but grow in the wild state, are a many-seeded berry, blue or bluish-black in color. Huckleberries, although belonging to a different class, are commonly regarded as blueberries by many persons. Berries of this kind occur in many varieties. Some grow on low bushes close to the ground, others are found on taller bushes, and still others grow on very tall bushes. Again, some grow in dry ground in a mountainous region, others grow in a level, sandy soil, and other varieties succeed better on swampy soil. ”

“ The full grown fruit is red, but turns black or very dark purple when ripe. The berry is composed of a compact and adhering cluster of drupes, each drupe about one thirty-second of an inch long. What seems to be a single berry is really an aggregation of very small fruits, each resembling a tiny cherry. The mulberry is naturally a forest tree, but it is permitted to grow about the margins of fields, and is often planted in door yards for its fruit and its shade. It is looked upon by many as a tame species. ”

“ Iglesias and I took up the packs and hurried on with minds intent on berries. Berries we always found,—blueberries covered with a cloudy bloom, blueberries pulpy, saccharine, plenteous.
Often, when a portage was not quite necessary, a dangerous bit of white water would require the birch to be lightened. Cancut must steer her alone over the foam, while we, springing ashore, raced through the thick of the forest, tore through the briers, and plunged through the punk of trees older than history, now rotting where they fell, slain by Time the Giganticide. Cancut then had us at advantage. ”

“ When wild roses give place to sun-kissed meadow lilies, when daisies drop their petals and meadow-sweet whitens the pastures, when blueberries peep out from their glossy coverts and raspberries begin to redden on the hill, then from every side come the baby cries of younglings just out of the nest, and everywhere are anxious parents hurrying about, seeking food to stuff hungry little mouths, or trying to keep too venturesome young folk out of danger. ”

“ We ourselves went out and gathered several pailsful from the rocks on the first portage. Blue-berries, or knuckle-berries as they are called in Ontario, grow much larger in the North-west than I ever saw them elsewhere, being sometimes as large as small Delaware grapes. The little bushes grow thickly in the crevices of the rocks, and are so completely covered with fruit that their tiny leaves are scarcely visible. They have a beautiful bloom upon them when fresh, and are cool and delicious to the taste. ”

“ There were both red and white raspberries—beautiful fruit. Gooseberries of all kinds abounded, and currants, too; but the loveliest sight of all was a cherry tree, so covered with bright red fruit shining in the sun that it almost hid the leaves.
Here we spent the long hot afternoon, and when we saw our friends’ buggy slowly making its way down the wide river-bed, we hailed them and helped to gather as much fruit as they wanted; and then they departed, leaving the valley empty once more, except for ourselves. ”

“ The berry bushes crowd together in thick-set patches, waist-high, interspersed with big "high-bush" shrubs in clumps or alone, low, hoary juniper, and great, dark masses of richly glossy, richly fragrant bay. The pointed cedars stand about like sentinels, stiff enough save where their sensitive tops lean delicately away from the wind. In the scant herbage between is goldenrod, the earliest and the latest alike at home here, and red lilies and asters, and down close to the ground, if you care to stoop for them, trailing vines of dewberries with their fruit, the sweetest of all the blackberries. ”