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Harmless🍽️ Edible💊 Medicinal

🔴 Cranberry

Vaccinium macrocarpon · Ericaceae

🍁 North America🌲 Boreal
🧠 To remember it'It floats because it breathes' — each cranberry contains small internal air pockets that make it float, exploited commercially for wet harvesting by flooding fields.
Cranberry — Vaccinium macrocarpon

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small creeping shrub with threadlike woody stems carpeting the ground of acid bogs, featuring tiny evergreen leathery leaves. Pink flowers with backward-curving petals resemble the head of a crane (hence the name 'crane berry'), followed by large round to oval red berries that float on water when ripe — a property exploited for their commercial harvest by flooding fields.

  1. creeping threadlike stems carpeting bog ground
  2. tiny, leathery evergreen leaves
  3. pink flower with backward-curving petals
  4. bright red berry that floats on water when ripe
Sizecreeping stems 5-20 cm high
FloweringJune-July, ripe berries September-October
Habitatacidic bogs, marshes, edges of boreal ponds, from Quebec and the Maritimes to Wisconsin and Massachusetts

⚠️ Not to be confused with

Bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)low to moderate — solanine, causes digestive distress and, in larger amounts in children, more serious effects; grows in the same wetlands and bogs as cranberry

To tell them apart: cranberry is a woody creeping dwarf shrub with tiny leathery leaves, pink flower with backward-curving petals, and its fruit floats on water; bittersweet nightshade is a climbing herbaceous vine with star-shaped purple flowers with a yellow center, thin leaves often lobed at the base, and its red berries hang in clusters on an aerial stem, never flush with the sphagnum mat

🍽️ Eating it

Partsripe fruit
SeasonSeptember-October, keeps late into winter on the vine under the snow
Tasteextremely tart and astringent raw, balanced once cooked and sweetened

Preparation : very tart raw, almost inedible as is; best cooked with sugar (sauce, jelly, jam), dried, or as diluted and sweetened juice

46kcalEnergy
0.4gProtein
0.1gFat
12.2gCarbs
13.3mgVitamin C
0.25mgIron
8mgCalcium

USDA FoodData Central, raw cranberries, per 100 g

💊 Healing with it

cranberry juice and extract are traditionally and widely used today to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections, thanks to type-A proanthocyanidins which prevent certain bacteria (E. coli) from adhering to the bladder wall

Level of evidence : solid studies — Cochrane systematic reviews on cranberry and urinary tract infections

⚠️ in large quantities, can interact with oral anticoagulants (warfarin) by increasing bleeding risk — monitoring recommended if on anticoagulant therapy; commercial sweetened juice does not have the same preventive effect as concentrated extract

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • traditional red dye
  • keeps fresh for several months thanks to its natural benzoic acid content, a natural preservative that long allowed it to be transported over long distances without refrigeration
Sources (3)

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.