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| vaccinium uliginosum |
here's a blue berry that's not blueberry. it's bog blueberry, or juolukka in finnish. the leaves look like lingonberry but the bush is usually much taller than even blueberries. the easiest way to tell the berry apart from regular blueberry is by biting into it. the juice is clear so they don't leave those tell-tale stains. i've also read that they're supposed to be really bland but over here they're pretty tasty, so i don't know about that. it's a bit harder to find since it only grows in the damp spots of the forest. it's listed as an endangered species in michigan and minnesota, where it's called alpine blueberry or alpine bilberry respectively. other names include bog whortleberry and northern bilberry. and about a dozen finnish ones, which all sound more or less demeaning, except oivukka which has more of an 'excellent' tone to it. blander and paler it may be, but juolukka does have much more vitamin c than mustikka, the proper blueberry. it's been considered toxic and nausea-inducing before, but nowadays those symptoms are accredited to either a parasitic fungus that mummifies the berries, or another bog plant, marsh labrador tea, wafting its intoxicating fumes onto hapless berry-munchers. i was told they are poisonous as a kid and once accidentally ate them and freaked out, but they are absolutely safe to consume.
