This week: Huckleberry, a Fall Favorite
Hello!
Our tour of fall foliage continues with a native shrub that is typically found in woodlands, Black Huckleberry (Gaylussacia baccata). In September and October, it turns a vibrant red in forest openings and among the understory.
Black Huckleberry grows three feet tall and wide, and left untended, will form colonies or thickets. Its small bell-shaped flowers bloom in the spring and produce small black fruits in late July and August. It grows in sun to shade, but flower (and ultimately fruit) production is better the sunnier it is. Like its kin, the blueberry, it prefers acidic soil. But it also thrives in lean, rocky soils, and dry to moist soils. While the small size and beautiful fall color would make Black Huckleberry perfect for home landscaping, it isn’t widely cultivated—maybe because its fruit is seedy, or because it isn’t easy to grow from seed.
Even though the shrub isn’t nearly as popular as it should be, it holds an important place in the forest environment. Black Huckleberry berries are a food source for plenty of birds, black bears, and other woodland creatures, including humans. You can eat the berries straight off the plant, or you may have had a grandmother like mine who transformed them into pies and jellies.
Notable Huckleberries
There are a few kinds of huckleberry plants with varying levels of fame. The distribution map for Black Huckleberry suggests that this fruit could be the namesake of Huckleberry Finn, as it was once common in Missouri and is native from the east coast to the Mississippi River. At the time of Twain’s writing, huckleberry was slang for something small or someone of little consequence—a bummer for Huck.
Another type, Red Huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum), is the state fruit of Montana and grows along the slopes and forests of the Rocky Mountains. Travel through the mountain west and you’ll find all kinds of sweets starring the humble huckleberry.
There’s also the rare, ancient Box Huckleberry (Gaylussacia brachycera) growing in southcentral Pennsylvania. One stand of it in the Tuscarora State Forest has been growing continuously for the past 13,000 years, before the last ice age.
If you stumble across huckleberry shrubs in the forest, take a moment to appreciate them, and if you’re lucky enough to find them ripe, enjoy a snack!
Elsewhere:
Fall is a great time to manage invasive shrubs, vines, and weeds—they’re often easy to spot because they stay green or hold onto their foliage longer than native plants. This article from the University of New Hampshire Extension is a useful guide to one type of fall cleanup that is worthy of your to-do list.
Have a good week,
Julie