Plant · P-439

Lingonberry

Vaccinium vitis-idaea

Lingonberry is a low, evergreen, mat-forming subshrub native across the far north - from Iceland and Scandinavia through northern Asia to Japan, and into Canada and the northeastern United States. It yields small, tart berries that taste noticeably better after the first frost and get used like cranberries in preserves, sauce, juice and baking. It spreads by underground stolons into a dense evergreen groundcover, and the leaf, stem and fruit also give a yellow and a purple dye. It needs consistently moist, acid, lime-free soil and cool summers - it is a boreal-to-montane plant with no lowland hot-summer population anywhere in its range.