7/29/10 BITTER BERRIES

HIGHBUSH CRANBERRIES
ANOTHER FINE DAY
HIGHBUSH CRANBERRY
Thursday, 8:30 AM. 70 degrees, wind WNW, very light. The sky is cloudless with some haze over the lake, the channel is calm, and the barometer predicts sunshine.
The highbush cranberries (not cranberries at all), Viburnum acerifolium, are ripening fast. They are quite bitter and I wouldn’t find them edible, although the birds do, late in the winter. This and other Viburnums are attractive landscape and wildlife shrubs. In European herbal medicine the bark is used as a nervine, for cramps and spasms. Native Americans used it in much the same way, and the Ojibwa used the dried bark in kinnikinic, a smoking mixture (Moreman, “Native American Etnobotany”).