gathering bilberries

Yesterday I managed to add another crop to my list of grown and gathered edibles. I was aware of some bushy plants covering some banking in the woods. More recently I spotted some small berries on them, which confirmed that they were bilberries. I think that American Bilberries might produce larger berries, ours produce berries larger than pepper corns, but smaller than grapes. They are the black blue that blueberries are, perhaps blacker than that. It is worth pointing out that gathering a crop is time consuming, I must have been ten fifteen minutes to gather a cup full. If you were to make jam, then you would be looking for about a kilo, so unless there is an army of you, and acres of bilberries, it is probably best to find something else to do with them.

We fell back on that old staple of sprinkling them on ice cream, which was really nice. They did not have any particular flavour, possibly sweet, certainly not sharp, the pleasure was in the crisp crunch of their skins, like little grapes being broken by your teeth. I suppose you could also add them to a plain yoghurt to make you own yoghurt.

We are descended from hunter gatherers, so it seems obvious that we must have evolved to survive on a rich mix of opportunistically gathered wild crops. There is certainly a school of thought that berries are the nutritional super-food. I'm not sure I believe in super-foods, but a really diverse and seasonal diet must be a good thing.

The classic text on wild foods is of course Food for Free by Richard Mabey, which now comes in a rich mix of different editions. He describes Bilberries as

widespread throughout the British Isles, except the south and east of England, and locally abundant on heaths and moors. An erect shrub, growing 9 to 18 inches high, with hairless twigs, and oval, slightly toothed, bright green leaves. Flowers; solitary, drooping, greenish pink globes. Fruits from July to September, small round and black, and covered in bloom.

I suppose that what is distinctive about it is how it forms a shrubby mass, not high, but expanding out, rather like a wild and slightly shaggy cousin of box, or a more erect version of the cranberry, to which it is of course related. As with all the vaccinium, it requires acid soil, so don't even think about trying to grow it if you cannot offer acid soil. I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be for cropping, it is a fairly modest crop that is a lot of work to find, but it does seem to act as a decent ground cover over banking so it might well earn a place in my garden on those grounds.