Photo: Moravice — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Survives zone 2 through 5
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
Cloudberry is a genus outlier in almost every respect — a low, unbranched, non-prickly perennial of cold bogs rather than a caned bramble, it is dioecious (needing separate male and female plants, unlike the mostly self-fertile Rubus genus) and demands acidic, waterlogged peat rather than ordinary garden soil. It is culturally significant across Scandinavia — served with cheese in Finland, as a dessert topping in Sweden (where it is nicknamed "Norrland's gold"), and as moltekrem (cloudberry cream) in Norway — and appears on Finland's two-euro coin.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–5
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- Summer–autumn
- Mature size
- Low herbaceous perennial 10–25 cm, spreading by rhizome through peat — no canes
- Light
- Full sun (open bog)
- Soil pH
- 6.0–7.0 (near-neutral)
- Environment
- Arctic and boreal bog
- Native range
- Circumpolar boreal and subarctic — native across northern Europe (including Britain and Scandinavia), northern Russia and Siberia, and North America (Alaska, Canada, and parts of the northern contiguous US), roughly from 55°N to 78°N, typically in cool, boggy tundra, mires and mountainsides.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–4 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow — a low perennial reaching only about 10–25 cm tall, spreading gradually via rhizomes rather than putting out long annual canes.
- Spacing
- 30 cm (12 in) apart — about 11 per m² (10 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Palmate leaves with five to seven hand-like lobes, borne one to three per short, unbranched, non-woody stem — unlike the caned, prickly growth of most Rubus, cloudberry has no thorns.
- Root system
- A shallow, spreading rhizome system adapted to saturated peat, from which new upright stems arise; spread is by rhizome extension rather than cane tip-rooting.
- Fruit description
- A raspberry-type aggregate of 5–25 large drupelets that separates cleanly from its core when picked; unripe berries are pale red, ripening in early autumn to a distinctive soft amber-gold color, with a tart, distinctive flavor often compared to baked apple.
- Propagation
- Propagated by division of the spreading rhizomes in early spring or autumn, since named clones must be paired for pollination; also by seed (cold-stratified and sown in a cold frame in early autumn) or by half-ripe cuttings taken July–August, though division is the most reliable way to guarantee both sexes.
- Pollination
- Dioecious — individual plants bear either all-male or all-female flowers, so both sexes must be grown together for fruit to set; pollinated by bees and flies and not self-fertile, a marked departure from the largely self-fertile, hermaphrodite-flowered rest of the genus.
The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.
Growing guide
Fertilizing. Needs distinctly different soil chemistry from most garden Rubus — very acidic, peaty, boggy soil with a pH of about 3.5–5.0, similar to blueberry or cranberry growing conditions but consistently wetter; it will not thrive in ordinary neutral or calcareous garden soil, and standard fertilizer or lime application should be avoided.
How it spreads. Spreads slowly by underground rhizomes to form low colonies rather than by cane tip-layering; it is a low clumping perennial with limited annual spread, so patches expand gradually over years rather than aggressively.
Growing tips. Requires cool summers to fruit well — sustained warmth above roughly 24°C (75°F) stresses the plant and impairs fruit set, and it struggles or fails outright in warm-summer climates, making it unsuitable much beyond its native boreal/subarctic range despite its cold hardiness. Needs full sun (it will not fruit in shade) and constantly moist to wet, acidic peat; because it is dioecious, both a male and a female plant are required for any fruit to set, and each flowering stem produces only a single berry, so yields are inherently low. Commercial cultivation attempts in Scandinavia have never succeeded at meaningful scale — nearly all cloudberries sold are wild-harvested from bogs.
Grow journal
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