Whortleberry

“ At last the blackberries shine in the hedges, the whortleberry on the hills. Now comes the last flower of all, the pale veilleuse, or lilac colchicum, springing in myriads in the aftermath and orchard-grass, although, on the heights, a few stunted scabious, wild pinks, and gentians may linger until Martinmas. Chill October is at hand. Already, a fortnight ago, one stormy afternoon, I watched the swallows gather in the clouds. The time of flowers is over.
To us, the beautiful blossoms are a mere delight. To the mountain shepherds, the gentian gathering is a fruitful, unsown harvest. ”

“ The American whortleberry, or the Vaccinium hispidulum, is extremely abundant [80] over all North America, and grows in such places where we commonly find our whortle-berries in Sweden. The American ones are bigger, but in most things so like the Swedish ones, that many people would take them to be mere varieties. The English call them Cranberries, the Swedes Tranbær, and the French in Canada Atopa, which is a name they have borrowed from the Indians. They are brought to market every Wednesday and Saturday at Philadelphia, late in autumn. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This little shrub, including all its numerous varieties, spreads over a broad extent of country, growing alike within the forest, in waste lands, upon hills and in swamps; it is well known that on this Western Continent it fills the place held in Europe by the heath. Though much less showy than the golden broom or the purple heather, the European plants of waste grounds, the whortleberry has the higher merit of producing an edible fruit, which we still find very pleasant, though now supplied with so many luxuries of the kind by horticulture. ”

“ Violets are found everywhere; the moose-flowers are increasing in numbers; young strawberry blossoms promise a fine crop of fruit; the whortleberry-cups are hanging thickly on their low branches, and the early elders are showing their dark, chocolate flower-buds, which we should never expect to open white. The ferns are also unrolling their long-colored fans. We gathered some ground laurel, but the squirrel-cups are forming their seed. ”

“ The Empalement, with the floral leaves.
3. The Chives, magnified.
4. The Shaft and its Summit, magnified.
5. A nearly ripe Berry.
6. The same, cut transversely, magnified.
This very handsome species of Whortleberry was introduced, from North America, in the year 1765, by Mr. John Cree, Nurseryman, of Addlestone, amongst many others. It is a hardy plant, in our climate. This species inclines to a loamy, rather than a peat soil, and is propagated by suckers, which it throws up from the root, or from layers; which may be put down in May, and taken off the succeeding year. ”

“ In some of the northern counties of New York, Herkimer and Warren, for instance, acres of wild lands, whole mountain-sides, are covered with this plant, even to the exclusion, in many places, of the whortleberry; in that part of the country it also grows as a weed by the road-side, like the thistles and mulleins. In our own neighborhood it is chiefly confined to the woods. ”

“ The red whortleberry (vaccinium vitis idea) is found every where, but is most abundant in rocky places. It is aptly termed by the Crees weesawgum-meena, sour berry. The common cranberry (oxycoccos palustris,) is distinguished from the preceding by its growing on moist sphagnous spots, and is hence called maskœgo-meena swamp-berry. The American guelder rose, whose fruit so strongly resembles the cranberry, is also common. There are two kinds of it, (viburnum oxycoccos, and edule,) one termed by the natives peepoon-meena, winter-berry, and the other mongsoa-meena, moose-berry. ”

“ I vividly recall the whortleberry and blackberry pastures of Portsmouth, where “Miraculous Susan” used to spend the greater part of her time in July and August, gathering berries for the Newport market. I can see the old woman now as she used to pass with her baskets and tin pails, and her bottle of cold coffee for lunch.
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I used sometimes to go with her, and when she had filled her baskets with berries she would help me fill mine. “It is what we do for other folks that makes life pleasant,” she often said. ”

“ Washington, above almost all the shrubs with which we are familiar, the same kind which they have in Greenland, and again, when we get home, in the lowest swamps, with a kind which the Greenlander never found.—First, there is the early, dwarf blueberry, the smallest of the whortleberry shrubs, the first to ripen its fruit, not commonly erect, but more or less reclined, often covering the earth with a sort of dense matting. ”

“ Norman, who was the maker of the pemmican, had produced a superior article upon this occasion. Besides the pounded meat and fat, he had mixed another ingredient with it, which rendered it a most delicious food. This third ingredient was a small purple-coloured berry—of which we have already spoken—not unlike the whortleberry, but sweeter and of a higher flavour. It grows through most of the Northern regions of America; and in some places, as upon the Red River and the Elk, the bushes that produce it are seen in great plenty. ”

“ Lambole sent Joe out with other children to collect the berries in a tin can; she sold them for fourpence a quart, and any child could earn eightpence a day in whortleberry time; one that was active might earn a shilling. ”

“ In the early part of the day we crossed some ridges of sandstone, and towards noon we travelled over granite, similar to that which abounds in the neighbourhood of Fort Enterprize. Much wood was seen in a valley far to the westward, but the hills over which our course lay were quite naked. The bog whortleberry (vaccinium uliginosum,) however, grew abundantly on these hills, and as its fruit was now in the highest perfection, the men at every resting-place threw themselves down, and indulged freely, without sustaining any injury. ”

“ The Bilberry is a common British shrub found on all mossy heaths, and very pretty both in flower and in fruit. Its older English name was Heathberry, and its botanical name is Vaccinium myrtillus. We have in Britain four species of Vaccinium: the Whortleberry or Bilberry (V. myrtillus) , the Large Bilberry (V. uliginosum) , the Crowberry (V. vitis idæa) , and the Cranberry (V. oxycoccos) . These British species, as well as the North American species (of which there are several) , are all beautiful little shrubs in cultivation, but they are very difficult to grow ”

“ Whortle-berry with oval, pointed, smooth leaves; flowers grow solitary from the foot-stalk of the leaves, close to the stem; foot-stalks of the flowers are very long, having floral leaves; blossoms pitcher-shaped, nearly white; ten chives. ”

“ The Chives and Seed-bud, the leaflets of the cup cut off, magnified.
4. The Pointal, magnified.
This species of Whortle-berry was introduced from Carolina, about the year 1794, by Mr. J. Fraser, nurseryman. It is another of those with ten chives, five cells in the berry, and five segments in the borders of the cup and blossom. It is an evergreen, and will live through a mild winter, on a warm border; but cannot resist the cold of a severe one, though a small degree of protection is sufficient for its preservation. ”

“ Descending further, the bleak aspect of Nature is transformed. The heather gives place to dwarf shrubs; the bare, weather-beaten rocks are clothed with blackberry bushes, or hidden amid luxurious bracken. Dark hollies clinging to detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. The air has suddenly become still. The butterflies hover over the foxgloves. The wild strawberry is at your feet. The sloeberries ripen around you. The sea before you might be the Mediterranean, so gently does it ripple up to the very edge of the hundred tiny plants that force their way amid the sand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A plant has a power of directing its roots for procuring food. 150 The red whortle-berry, a low evergreen plant, grows naturally on the tops of our highest hills, among stones and gravel. This shrub was planted in an edging to a rich border, under a fruit wall. ”

“ However Stella’s interest in huckleberries might flag later on there was no criticism to be made on her attention at first, and her fingers flew over the bushes at a rate which augured well for the filling of her pail. As for the Northmore girls, they were in ecstasies. Kate settled down to the business at once, though for a while she ate most of the berries she picked, while Esther paused between the handfuls to take long whiffs of the sweet fern which grew everywhere among the bushes, and to fill her eyes with the landscape which looked fairer than ever from the side of this green old hill. ”

“ Along this path you may have your choice of varieties as you go, from the pale blue ones that grow so very near the earth on their tiny bushes that they seem the salt of it, giving the day its zest, through the low-bush-blacks, crisp with seeds and aromatic in flavor as if smoked with the incense of the sweet-fern, to those other black ones that grow on the high bushes and rightfully take the name of huckleberry. The soil of these sandy hills may be thin and not worth farming, but it produces fruit whose quality puts to shame the product of well-cultivated gardens. ”

“ Then come the blackberries—plenty here as in the neighborhood of Falstaff; the running kind, or vine-blackberry, bearing the finest fruit of all its tribe, and growing abundantly on Long Island and in Westchester, is not, however, found in our hills. Whortleberries abound in our woods, and on every waste hill-side. Wild gooseberries are common, and last summer we met a man with a pail of them, which he was carrying to the village for sale. ”

“ The huckleberry is a sweet, dark blue berry, that grows on a very delicate low shrub, the blossoms are very pretty, pale pink or greenish white bells, the fruit is very wholesome; it grows on light dry ground, on those parts of the country that are called plains in Canada. The settlers' children go out in parties, and gather great quantities, either to eat or dry for winter use. These berries are a great blessing to every one, besides forming abundant food for the broods of young quails and partridges; squirrels, too, of every kind eat them. There are blackberries also, Lady Mary ”

“ Tips beardless, just without the blossom. Flowers grow in whorls about the middle of the branches, straight out. Blossom club-shaped, straight out, an inch long, and purple. Leaves by sixes, linear, tremulous, sharp-pointed, smooth, and tapering into hair-like footstalks a quarter of an inch in length. Stem shrubby, two feet high, and upright, simple at the base, then branching out from a whorl into simple ascending branches. ”

“ Leaves placed in whorls of three are very rare. The oleander, juniper and some few other plants have ternate whorls as a specific character. As an anomaly, ternate whorls are far more common, and perhaps any plant with opposite leaves may from time to time produce them. Races rich in this abnormality are found in the wild state in the yellow loosestrife or Lysimachia vulgaris, in which it is a very variable specific character, the whorls varying from two to four leaves. ”

“ Mosses and lichens, brown and black with the summer's heat, clothed the rocks and dressed out their barrenness; green tufts of fern nodded in many a nook, and kept their greenness still; and huckleberry bushes were on every hand, in every spare place, and standing full of the unreaped black and blue harvest. And in the very path, under their feet, sprang many an unassuming little green plant, that in the Spring had lifted its head in glorious beauty with some delicate crown of a flower. A stranger would have made nothing of them; but Winnie and Winthrop knew them all, crowned or uncrowned. ”

“ Berries grow in lavish abundance, enough for man and beast with thousands of tons to spare. The woods are full of them, especially about the borders of the waters and meadows where the sunshine may enter. Nowhere in the north does Nature set a more bountiful table. There are huckleberries of many species, red, blue, and black, some of them growing close to the ground, others on bushes eight to ten feet high; also salal berries, growing on a low, weak-stemmed bush, a species of gaultheria, seldom more than a foot or two high. ”

“ The red huckleberry bushes running miraculously along the ground among the trees everywhere, except where the land’s tilled, these keep her from that tiredness the earth’s touch lays up under the soles of feet. She runs beyond the wood follows the swiftest along the roads laughing among the birch clusters her face in the yellow leaves the curls before her eyes her mouth half open. ”