Photo: David Gaya — CC BY-SA 2.5 · source
Survives zone 2 through 6
Harvest calendar
Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.
A circumboreal arctic-alpine bilberry, historically the most popular foraged fruit for Native communities around Fort Yukon, Alaska; blue-black berries with a bluish bloom, used in jams, jellies and pies.
- Hardiness
- Zone 2–6
- Habit
- Shrub
- Edible part
- Fruit
- Ripens
- July–Sept
- Mature size
- Low deciduous shrub 10–75 cm; excellent in containers, which also keeps the compost acid
- Light
- Full sun (open bog/heath)
- Soil pH
- 3.5–6.2 in the wild (most cultivated-garden sources cite 4.5–6) — a wider ecological tolerance than most of the genus
- Environment
- Arctic-alpine and boreal bog
- Native range
- Circumboreal — Alaska, most of Canada, Greenland, south to New England, the northern Great Lakes states and western Washington/Oregon in North America; northern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Korea and Japan in Eurasia.
- Status
- Wild
- Years to fruit
- 2–3 yrs
- Growth speed
- Slow
- Spacing
- 60 cm (24 in) apart — about 2.8 per m² (2.6 per 10 sq ft)
- Leaf shape
- Oval to elliptic leaves 1–2 cm long with a blue-green to grayish cast and conspicuous veining; deciduous, turning crimson-orange in autumn.
- Root system
- Shallow rhizomes (near-surface to 15–20 cm deep) forming dense mats or open colonies; relies on mycorrhizal fungi for nutrient uptake.
- Fruit description
- Blue to black berries with a waxy bloom, 5–10 mm across, juicy and sweet.
- Propagation
- By seed (30 days of cold stratification at 2°C improved germination in one study, indicating shallow dormancy) or, more reliably, by root/rhizome cuttings (52% rooting success in one trial versus poor results from stem cuttings).
- Pollination
- Self-fertile, better with a 2nd cultivar
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
How it spreads. Low, much-branched and rhizomatous, forming dense mats or open colonies 20–40 cm tall, rooting along branches where they touch the ground.
Growing tips. Forms a well-documented ericoid mycorrhizal partnership that boosts nitrogen uptake in the cold, poorly aerated, nutrient-poor bog soils it grows in — yet one study found it showed no significant response to fertilization or irrigation in its natural setting, unlike cultivated blueberries. Notably resistant to the blueberry fungus Fusicoccum putrefaciens, which has made it useful in breeding programs. Also known to tolerate and accumulate heavy metals (uranium, copper, lead, zinc, nickel, iron) in its leaf tissue without apparent harm.
Grow journal
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