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Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🔴 Lingonberry (mountain cranberry)

Vaccinium vitis-idaea · Éricacées

🏔️ Mountains🌲 Boreal
🧠 To remember it'Red and green all year long, wild blueberry leaves in winter are gone' — foliage that stays green in the dead of winter gives away the lingonberry, never the wild blueberry.
Lingonberry (mountain cranberry) — Vaccinium vitis-idaea

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small evergreen subshrub (unlike the deciduous blueberry), 10 to 30 cm tall, with leathery oval leaves, shiny on top, dotted with small brown spots underneath, staying green all year round. Grouped bell-shaped pinkish-white flowers, followed by bright shiny red berries with pale flesh, tart, growing in small clusters. Forms low, evergreen carpets in coniferous undergrowth and moors, very common from the Alps to the Arctic Circle.

  1. evergreen foliage all year round (unlike the deciduous blueberry)
  2. underside of leaves dotted with small brown spots
  3. bright red berry with pale flesh (never purple)
  4. dense, low carpet growth habit under conifers
Size10-30 cm
Floweringmai-juillet
Habitatconiferous undergrowth, acidic moors and peat bogs, from the Alps and Pyrenees to the boreal taiga and circumpolar Arctic

⚠️ Not to be confused with

No known dangerous confusionaucun

To tell them apart: evergreen foliage staying green all year round, dotted underneath with small resinous brown spots, and the bright red berry with pale flesh (never purple) are not found together on any other toxic berry in coniferous undergrowth

🍽️ Eating it

Partsripe berries
Seasonaoût-octobre
Tastetart, slightly bitter raw, excellent cooked with sugar

Preparation : very tart raw, improves significantly cooked into jam, sauce, or syrup (classic accompaniment for game meat in Scandinavia, 'lingonsylt')

51kcalEnergy
0.6gProtein
0.3gFat
12.9gCarbs
20mgVitamin C

USDA FoodData Central and Nordic data (Arktiset Aromit), raw lingonberry, per 100 g

💊 Healing with it

traditionally used for urinary tract comfort (similar to the American cranberry, proanthocyanidins)

Level of evidence : limited studies — Nordic and Alpine ethnobotanical literature, closely related family to Vaccinium macrocarpon (cranberry)

⚠️ no major contraindications at dietary doses

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • long natural shelf life thanks to the benzoic acid it contains (Scandinavians preserve it raw, simply covered with water, for several months)
Sources (2)

No entry replaces a certain identification in the field, or medical advice. When in doubt: don't eat it. If ingestion is suspected: poison control or 112/911.