Photo: Walter Siegmund (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Oval-Leaved Blueberry
Vaccinium ovalifolium
Also known as Early Blueberry, Alaska Blueberry, Oval-leaf Bilberry, Mountain Blueberry, Blueleaf Huckleberry
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Long before trail mix and jam jars, Oval-leaved Blueberry was one of the great seasonal foods of the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska, gathered by the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and many neighboring peoples as one of the earliest berries to ripen each summer, hence the name Early Blueberry. Families followed the fruit up mountainsides as it ripened at higher and higher elevations, drying great quantities on racks over smoky fires to carry the sweetness into winter. The leaves, gathered and dried in their own right, were steeped into a mild, astringent tea used as a quiet everyday tonic. Even today, the plant is treasured less as a medicine cabinet staple and more as a deeply rooted food tradition, one that ties the forest calendar to the table.
How to grow & use it
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- ✦Bilberry
- ✦Rose hips
- ✦Nettle
- ✦Cultivated blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum)
- ✦Bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus)
“For the hush of a shaded forest trail and the first sweet blue berry of the season.”
Oval-leaved Blueberry is often the very first wild blueberry to ripen each summer across its range, sometimes weeks ahead of its relatives, which is exactly how it earned the nickname Early Blueberry among foragers and bears alike.
The ripe berries are a safe, well-loved traditional food. Concentrated leaf teas have traditionally been thought to affect blood sugar, so people on diabetes medication should be cautious with those specifically.