Cowberries ripe
Photo: Arne Ader
Translation: Liis
Cowberry or lingonberry.
| Cowberry; lingonberry |
Pohl
|
Vaccinum vitis-idaea |
It is the longest keeping in storage of our wild berries and it is believed to have the best balance of sugars and acids for the human organism. The dwarf shrub with its evergreen leaves is beautiful in flower as well as when the berries ripen, and the growing environment of cowberries – open, dryish pine forests with reindeer lichen are pleasant places for roaming.
Let us see how the cowberry shrub propagates. In a good growing envieonment one plant has several above-ground stems, connected by rhizomes or underground stems. Upward-growing side shoots develop from buds on the underground rhizome. So the plant spreads some tens of centimetres further, forming new shrublets that will bear fruit in three or four years time. Stems that have already born fruit die, but not the original shrub itself, it grows new upright stems. The lifelength of the mother or original shrublet is estimated to be up to fifteen years; after that it leaves its place to younger ones. All the shrublets have the same life cycle.
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