CRANBERRY, the fruit of several small plants allied to the bilberry (q.v.). The northern cranberry (Vaccinium Oxy- 1 coccus) is found in marshy land in northern and central Europe and northern North America. Its stems are wiry, creeping and of varying length ; the leaves are evergreen, dark and shining above, glaucous below, revolute at the margin, ovate, lanceolate or ellip tical in shape, and not more than half an inch long ; the flowers, which appear in May or June, are small and stalked, and have a four-lobed, rose-tinted corolla, purplish filaments, and anther-cells forming two long tubes. The berries ripen in August and Sep tember ; they are pear-shaped and about the size of currants, are crimson in colour and often spotted, and have an acid and astrin gent taste. The American cranberry (V. macrocarpum) is found wild from Newfoundland to the Carolinas and westward to Wis consin and Arkansas. It attains a greater size than V. oxycoccus and bears bigger and finer berries, which are of three principal sorts, the cherry or round, the bugle or oblong, and the pear or bell-shaped, and vary in hue from light pink to dark purple, or may be mottled red and white. The southern cranberry (V. erythrocarpurn) is a species indigenous in the mountains from Virginia to Georgia, and is remarkable for the excellent flavour of its dark red berry.
Air and moisture are the chief requisites for the thriving of the cranberry plant. The American cranberry is cultivated on a soil of peat or vegetable mould, free from loam and clay, and cleared of turf and having a surface layer of clean sand. Over a million bushels are marketed annually in the United States. Cranberries should be gathered when ripe and dry, otherwise they do not keep well. The darkest-coloured berries are those which are most esteemed. The picking of the fruit begins in New Jersey in October, at the close of the blackberry and whortleberry season, and often lasts until the coming of cold weather. The fruit is much used for pies and tarts, and also for making an acid summer beverage. The cowberry, or red whortleberry (V actinium Vitis Idaea), called mountain cranberry in the eastern United States, is sometimes sold for the cranberry. The Tasmanian and the Aus tralian cranberries are the produce respectively of Astroloma humi f usum and Lissanthe sapida, plants of the family Epacri daceae.
See Corbett, "Cranberry Culture," Farmers' Bulletin, no. 176, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (1911) .