By Joyce White

Guest Columnist

I’ve found cranberries growing naturally every place I’ve lived in Maine except for Aroostook County. There was a small cranberry bog on the farm where I grew up in Central Maine and another on the blueberry ground where I lived for a time in Eastern Maine. In this area of Western Maine, there are patches that I’m aware of growing naturally in Stoneham, Albany Township and Lovell.

In Jack Staub’s book, 75 Remarkable Fruits for Your Garden, he describes some of cranberry’s history. The American cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is native only to North America but has been naturalized to many parts of the globe. Known by a host of Native American names, it was the earliest European settlers who coined the term “crane berry.” They thought the small pink blossoms resembled the head and bill of a crane.

Native Americans had many uses for the cranberry, including as a natural carmine dye and mashed into a poultice to draw poison from arrow wounds. Probably most well-known was its use in creating pemmican in which cranberries were pounded into venison to create their long-keeping staple food. Cranberry’s natural benzoic acid content preserved the meat almost indefinitely

Deleware Indians of New Jerseyd, who called it parmintzen, found cranberries so valuable to them in so many ways that they revered it as an earthly symbol of peace and plenty. And we’ve all been told the story of Pilgrims who were served cranberries by the hospitable Wampanoag Indians at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621.

By the 18th century, barrels of cranberries became standard on American sailing ships since it had been noted that cranberries could prevent scurvy, though they probably did not know it was the high vitamin C content that protected sailors on those long sea voyages from the ravages of scurvy.

Cranberries are another of those gifts of the Earth that can improve our health and well-being, with no side effects. If they happen to grow on your property, so much the better. I’ve seen them touted as a healthy snack and they would be if you like sour things but beautiful and shiny scarlet as they are, I’m not tempted to eat them right off the vine as we would raspberries or blackberries. Even with some added sweetener, though, they are a health-giving berry. Their high vitamin C content makes them a valuable antioxidant to prevent cell damage and boost collagen production, thus helping with wound healing, joint health and skin integrity. In addition to promoting healthy cells, thereby reducing oxidative stress which leads to inflammation, some research has linked the specific role of certain cranberry polyphenols to reducing the risk of stomach cancer and bacterial infections. And most of us have heard that drinking cranberry juice helps prevent urinary tract infections.

Dennis, Mass. was the birthplace of the American cultivated cranberry industry in 1816 when Henry Hall noticed that sand blowing in from the beaches onto his natural cranberry bogs improved his wild cranberry production dramatically. Hall then began transplanting wild cranberry vines into manageable beds and topping them off with sand.

It turns out that cranberries don’t actually need a bog to grow, even though that is where most seem to grow naturally. Rick and Linda Woodward of Stoughton, Mass. started their organic cranberry farm in Albany Township 1994. Rick had learned the process of creating cranberry plantings – human made rather that Nature made — while working for a bog builder on Cape Cod.

Their 10 acres had previously been clear-cut woodland and required a lot of hard physical labor to remove stumps, get an irrigation system set up and then to plant each little plant by hand. Vines to be planted come in bales and need to be kept moist and planted promptly after they arrive. It takes from two to five years to first harvest but they have had many good harvests, selling their cranberries to individuals and to large food producers. The spring of 2020 was difficult for all kinds of growers with a late spring frost and Woodward’s cranberries did not escape. So many of the blossoms were damaged by frost that they don’t expect many saleable berries this fall—which will be a disappointment not only to the Woodwards but to their many local customers.

I learned about highbush cranberries when I lived in Aroostook County — small berries growing on tall bushes, a lighter red, tasting quite different from the fat scarlet cranberries. And they aren’t actually cranberries but of the viburnum family (Viburnum opulus.L). It is native Eurasia and North Africa but has been naturalized throughout Canada and northern U.S. Aroostook County women make a sauce or jelly from them and it is served with venison or turkey.

In earlier times, they were well known for their medicinal qualities. A tea brewed from their bark has been in use as a household remedy for cramps since pioneer times. American Indians had discovered the antispasmodic virtues of a related shrub, Viburnum tribulum, and it was part of their repertory of plant medicine used to ease the pain of childbirth as well as menstrual and stomach cramps.  

Joyce White is a resident of Stoneham.