the small bluish fruits of various scrubby (‘low-bush’) and bushy (‘high-bush’) plants of the genus Vaccinium. The most important N. American species are named below. In C. and N. Europe, the corresponding species is V. myrtillus, but this is preferably called bilberry.
Wild blueberries are found wherever suitable conditions (acid soil and enough moisture at all seasons) exist, as far north as the limits of human habitation. Most commercially cultivated blueberries are grown in N. America, especially New Jersey, Michigan, Indiana, N. Carolina, Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia; but cultivation also takes place in parts of W. Europe and has been started in New Zealand.
The blueberry is the most recent example of a fruit plant taken from the wild and brought into commercial cultivation, a development which began in New Jersey in 1920. The cultivars then introduced served as the basis of a new agricultural industry which put to good use acid, boggy soils which had previously been thought worthless for cultivation. The cultivated varieties of blueberry are mostly hybrids of three native American species, the high-bush V. corymbosum, the ‘rabbit-eye’ V. ashei, and the low-bush V. angustifolium. The fruits of cultivated varieties are far removed from wild blueberries and may be four times as big. The selection and breeding of commercial varieties has been aimed not only at size but also at a pleasing combination of acidity and sweetness.
Although the name blueberry is now standard for the commercially produced fruit, there has been much confusion in popular nomenclature in the past. New England colonists called the berries hurtleberries (=whortleberries), and later huckleberries and no doubt bilberries too. For the approved use of other common names applying to fruits of the genus Vaccinium, the whole of which is pervaded by confusion, see bilberry, cranberry, huckleberry, whortleberry.
Facciola (1990) provides an excellent conspectus of all these species. He observes that V. corymbosum var pallidum, the Blue Ridge blueberry, has the reputation of being superior to all other blueberries. He also lists V. floribundum, the Colombian blueberry, known locally as mortiño; this is an example of a good blueberry from somewhere other than N. America and Europe.
Wild blueberries were used extensively by the Indians of N. America. Besides eating them fresh, they dried them in the sun, to be used later like currants in puddings, cakes, and pemmican; a practice ‘decidedly worth imitating, the berries drying readily in a week or ten days and being immune to decay’ (Fernald and Kinsey, 1943). They pounded the dried berries with parched meal or used them as a flavouring for meat and in soups.
The use of blueberries as fresh or stewed fruit, and in such American dishes as blueberry pie and blueberry muffins, or with ice cream, is well known. They make an excellent jelly and are prized for this purpose in France (and also for jams, tarts, and cakes).
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Facciola, Stephen (1990, rev edn 1998), Cornucopia: A Source Book of Edible Plants, Vista, Calif.: Kampong.
Fernald, M. L., and Kinsey, A. C. (1943), Edible Wild Plants of Eastern North America, Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Idlewild Press.
