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Harmless🍽️ Edible

🟠 Cloudberry (bakeapple, knotberry)

Rubus chamaemorus · Rosaceae

🌲 Boreal
🧠 To remember it“Red cloudberry wait a bit, golden amber is a hit” — only the translucent golden color signals full sweet maturity.
Cloudberry (bakeapple, knotberry) — Rubus chamaemorus

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

Small herbaceous perennial plant (not woody, unlike other Rubus), 10 to 25 cm, with a thornless stem bearing only 1 to 3 rounded, slightly lobed currant-like leaves. A single terminal white flower per stem (separate male and female plants), producing a raspberry-like aggregate fruit, initially red, then turning translucent amber-gold at full maturity.

  1. low herbaceous plant WITHOUT thorns, unlike other brambles
  2. a single flower and a single fruit per stem
  3. translucent amber-gold fruit when ripe (red when still immature)
  4. grows in bogs and sphagnum moss beds of the far North
Size10-25 cm
FloweringJune-July
Habitatacidic bogs and wet heathlands of the circumpolar tundra and taiga (Scandinavia, Russia, Canada, Alaska)

⚠️ Not to be confused with

No known dangerous look-alikesaucun

To tell them apart: a single lobed currant-like leaf and a single fruit per thornless herbaceous stem, in sphagnum bogs, are not found in any other toxic plant of the same environment

🍽️ Eating it

Partsripe fruit (amber-gold only, the red fruit is still sour and astringent)
SeasonJuly-August
Tastesweet and tangy, with complex notes reminiscent of both apricot and raspberry

Preparation : raw once fully ripe (amber and slightly translucent), as jam (“hilla” in Finnish, “moltebær” in Norwegian), traditional liqueur

200mgVitamin C

Nordic literature (Arktiset Aromit, Phyto Canada): about 75 g of cloudberries cover the recommended daily intake of vitamin C for an adult, an exceptionally high content among wild berries

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

  • luxury export fruit in Scandinavia (Lakka liqueur in Finland), highly sought-after and expensive due to its exclusively wild harvest
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.