FOOD RESOURCE COLLEGE OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SCIENCES, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
VACCINIUM PENSYLVANICUM, EARLY BLUEBERRY, LOW SWEET BLUEBERRY
Hedrick, U.P. editor. 1919. Sturtevant's Notes on Edible Plants. Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station for the Year 1919 II. Albany, J.B Lyon Company, State Printers. [References Available]
is a plant of Northern America, producing many varieties. The berries says Pursh, are large, bluish-black, extremely sweet and agreeable to eat. Gray says the berries are large and sweet and the earliest blueberry in the market. Emerson says the berries are blue, very sweet, rather soft for marketing, but are particulary suited to be preserved by drying. Kalm says the Indians formerly plucked huckleberries in abundance every year, dried them in the sun, and preserved them for eating. In 1615, Champlain found the indians near lake Huron gathering blueberries for their winter store. Roger Williams says fo the New England Indians that they "gathered attitaash, worthleberries, of which there are divers sorts: sweet, like currants, some opening, some of a binding nature. Sautaash are these currants dried and so preserved all the year, which they beat to powder and mingle with their parched meal and make a delicate dish which they call sautauthig, which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English." The indians of the Northwest coast are very fond of this fruit and smoke-dry it in large quantities for winter use.
