VACCINIUM CORYMBOSUM
BLUEBERRIES, of which several hundred species exist, are native to the circumpolar areas of the world, both north and south of the equator. To the north (starting at about the 38th parallel, from southern New Jersey, west to Mendocino County in California and farther up almost to the Arctic Circle), they are one of the most common plants in the woodlands, growing in millions upon millions of acres.
I remember, as a child in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains, I lay in my bed at night and looked at the glowing mountaintops to the south. They were on fire. The fires were nothing exceptional. Everyone knew they were purposely set to burn off the forest canopy so that native blueberries would regrow.
The arsonists would then harvest the blueberries and sell them in the big northeastern markets.
Until 1916, when Elizabeth White of the New Jersey Pine Barrens marketed the first cultivated blueberries, they were an entirely wild-harvested crop. Then cultivated varieties began to appear and blueberry farms began to spring up. But the harvesting of wild blueberries continues to this day. In the Poconos and Jersey Pine Barrens, folks with land on which wild blueberry bushes grow thick—around the towns of Long Pond and Tobyhanna in Pennsylvania—often set out pick-your-own signs, sit down on lawn chairs by the sign, and let the public in—for a price.
If you find yourself in that area around the third week in July, bring a bucket and gather your fill.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
There’s a blueberry farm not far from in California me where farmer Bruce Goetz has made the transition from conventional to organic blueberry culture. His story is typical of organic blueberry growers. Since blueberries tend to be free of pests and diseases, his conventional cultivation had included only chemical fertilizer and herbicide. Now he’s found an organic way to control weeds and fertilize his crop. Blueberries like an acid soil rich in decaying organic matter, and so organic compost, with its acid pH, is perfect for this plant. The cool nights and sunny days of summertime allow Goetz to produce small but highly flavored berries, many of them from his grandfather’s original planting of 1942. These were selections from the wild species, still sold today, named Jersey, Rancocas, and Rubel. He says that while most hybrid blueberries are big and watery, with sugar content at about 10 percent (Brix), his smaller but more flavorful berries get to about 15 Brix because of the low pH, organic soil, and local climate.
NUTRITION
Studies show that old varieties closer to the wild species have more nutritional content than modern hybrids, especially the cancer and heart disease-preventing antioxidants that blueberries are noted for. But even the hybrids are nutritional champs. Blueberries contain good amounts of calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, vitamin C, and folic acid. Researchers at the USDA Human Nutrition Center have found that blueberries rank number one in antioxidant activity when compared to forty other fresh fruits and vegetables. These antioxidants help neutralize harmful by-products of metabolism called free radicals that can lead to cancer and other age-related diseases. Anthocyanin—the phenolic pigment that makes the blueberries blue—is thought to be responsible for this major health benefit, along with vitamin C.
In another USDA lab, neuroscientists discovered that feeding blueberries to lab rats slowed age-related loss in their mental capacity. And according to scientists at UC Davis, blueberries may reduce the buildup of LDL (bad) cholesterol that contributes to cardiovascular disease and stroke. Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey have identified a compound in blueberries that promotes urinary tract health and reduces the risk of infection. It appears to work by preventing bacteria from adhering to the cells that line the walls of the urinary tract.
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