Blueberry

Vaccinium corymbosum

Ericaceae

An eastern acid-soil berry with a bloom on the skin — a pie fruit that will not grow in lime.

Ripe fruit is food. This is highbush garden blueberry, not a wild lowbush strip of someone else’s barrens.

Parts used: Ripe fruit
Traditional notes: Kitchen fruit · Traditional dried winter berry · Pie and jam
Grow · USDA 6b: Shrub, USDA 4–7 highbush; rabbiteye 7–9 A nursery bush. Two varieties for a full set. In work: Jun · Jul · Aug
Harvest: Wait a few days after they turn blue — sugar lags color.

Pine fines and sulfur, not lime.
Net or share with the catbird.

Safety

Known blueberry allergy (rare)

Companions

Plant with Pine, Yarrow.

Keep apart from Tomato.

Lookalikes

Deadly nightshade — Shiny black berries in a hedge are not Vaccinium. Atropa is a tropane. A handful has ended walks.

Lore

Indigenous nations of the east dried them into cakes and winter meat. Elizabeth White and Coville made a farm crop of the highbush in New Jersey in the 1910s. The wild Maine lowbush harvest is a different, older economy. The bloom on the berry is why a washed pint looks duller and why a dusty pint looks like money.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.