Plant · P-438

Cranberry

Vaccinium macrocarpon

Cranberry is a low, creeping evergreen groundcover of eastern North American bogs and cool wetlands, grown for its very acid, vitamin-C-rich berries. The fruit is too tart to eat raw for most tastes, so it goes into pies, preserves, sauce and juice, or gets dried for winter. Its trailing stems root as they run, knitting into a dense mat that spreads rapidly once established, and a planting takes about five years to reach full bearing but can then crop for sixty to a hundred years. It needs constantly wet to semi-boggy, strongly acid ground - the commercial crop is grown on a managed bog over a sand base.