frost berries: anyone know what these are?

[cathleenc]

My son, age 8, read about frost berries in one of Laura Ingalls Wilders book - 'On the Banks of Plum Creek', and is asking me to plant some. But I don't know what frost berries are - or how to find them!

Does anyone know what plant/fruit these might be? I'd love to help my son out!

thanks,
Cathy

[SirDude]

I never read the book, but if an 8y/o is asking for berries, I'm wondering if he's asking for these?




I found them listed under "frost berries" in a google search or this link

http://www.murrayhill5.net/blog/inmy...es/000349.html

Sound tasty to me, then again, sugar coated anything sounds good to me.

[D Lynn]

I wonder if she was talking about snowberries?

I found this > http://montana.plant-life.org/species/sympho_occi.htm

[cathleenc]

Laura and her sister picked & ate them raw following several hard frosts. I belive the 'Plum Creek' book is set in se Minnesota.

[tinknal]

Here is a web page of MN edible wild fruits. There are several possible candidates.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distrib...re/dg1133.html

[SirDude]

I asked the ex-wife if she knew, she's both into all those books, and is a berry nut! She can remembered having the book as a kid, but couldn't recall anything about the berries.

[dragonchick]

I wonder if they might be the berries of the Sumac. These sweeten considerably after a couple frosts. They may also be wintergreen berries.

[tinknal]

Originally Posted by dragonchick

I wonder if they might be the berries of the Sumac. These sweeten considerably after a couple frosts.

Sumac berries make a good lemonade, but the berries themselves are not very palatable. I'm guessing maybe pin cherries.

[used2bcool13]

I found this description in a fresh market link, which I have included although it is old, Please let us all know what these berries are when you find out. They sound so cool.
Good luck with your detective work.

Blink And You'll Miss It
Don't pass by the frost berries. The gorgeous, gold-speckled garnet berries make a lovely accompaniment for roast poultry. Raw, they can be sprinkled over a salad, like tart pomegranate seeds. Simmered down with sugar, they release a sauce redolent of strawberries and raspberries and their pits soften, taking on a popcornlike flavor. Depending on how much you sweeten it, the sauce goes nicely with pancakes, chicken, turkey, or assertive fish ($5 per half-pint at Gorzynski, available Saturday).

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2006/1..._and_gorg.html

[cathleenc]

Originally Posted by used2bcool13

I found this description in a fresh market link, which I have included although it is old, Please let us all know what these berries are when you find out. They sound so cool.
Good luck with your detective work.

Blink And You'll Miss It
Don't pass by the frost berries. The gorgeous, gold-speckled garnet berries make a lovely accompaniment for roast poultry. Raw, they can be sprinkled over a salad, like tart pomegranate seeds. Simmered down with sugar, they release a sauce redolent of strawberries and raspberries and their pits soften, taking on a popcornlike flavor. Depending on how much you sweeten it, the sauce goes nicely with pancakes, chicken, turkey, or assertive fish ($5 per half-pint at Gorzynski, available Saturday).

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2006/1..._and_gorg.html

I saw that one too! Isn't odd how you can read that great description and still not have a clue what the heck they are?!!

[naturelover]

They are lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) - also known as cowberries, frostberries, foxberries, quailberries, mountain cranberries, red whortleberries, lowbush cranberries, mountain bilberries, partridgeberries.

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Va...060824_003.jpg

.

[tinknal]

Originally Posted by naturelover

They are lingonberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) - also known as cowberries, frostberries, foxberries, quailberries, mountain cranberries, red whortleberries, lowbush cranberries, mountain bilberries, partridgeberries.

Picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Va...060824_003.jpg

.

I don't think lingonberries grow wild in Minnesota.

[naturelover]

Originally Posted by tinknal

I don't think lingonberries grow wild in Minnesota.

Is there any reason why they wouldn't? Is Minnesota too far south and too warm for them? I thought Minnesota was in the northern states and had more of a Canadian type of climate. Lingonberries grow wild pretty much all over Canada and as far north as Alaska and Labrador.

"The lingonberry, known in Canada as the partridgeberry, foxberry, redberry and cranberry grows throughout the country. The lingonberry also grows extensively in Alaska, where it is known as the lowbush cranberry and is utilized locally. This fruit can also be found in the extreme north east region of the United States especially in Maine and New Hampshire where it is harvested primarily for home use.

Vander Kloet's The Genus Vaccinium in North America (Research Branch, Agriculture Canada, 1988) describes in detail the range of this plant in North America."

Here is more comprehensive information about their range in North America and about their cultivation and growing conditions.
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/cat.../pnw/pnw583-e/

.

[Ravenlost]

Where I grew up in north Alabama we called them turkey berries. We used to eat them all the time, but they didn't have much flavor.

[LFmenagerie]

Originally Posted by tinknal

I don't think lingonberries grow wild in Minnesota.

They actually do grow along side the cranberries in the bogs of northern MN. DW and I, along with her parents, were picking blueberries a couple of years ago and found lots of cranberries and lingonberries in the low boggy spots around the blueberries. I didn't know what the lingonberries were at the time and neither did my inlaws. I did some research and am positive about the ID.
Tom

[CountryCabin]

Originally Posted by tinknal

I don't think lingonberries grow wild in Minnesota.

I had friends that used to live in Minn. and I was sure they said they had wild lingonberries there.
So in case I was loosing my mind I did a search, after all that was many years ago.

Sure enough there is lingonberries in Minn.

Many references to them.

Heres just a couple.

The Mighty Lingonberry
It survives northern winters from New England to Minnesota.

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/orgfar...y.by-R.E.Gough

-----------------------------
Have you ever heard of lingonberries? People in Minnesota have known about it forever, you betcha!

http://www.gardengirltv.com/lingonbe...landscape.html

[tinknal]

Originally Posted by CountryCabin

I had friends that used to live in Minn. and I was sure they said they had wild lingonberries there.
So in case I was loosing my mind I did a search, after all that was many years ago.

Sure enough there is lingonberries in Minn.

Many references to them.

Heres just a couple.

The Mighty Lingonberry
It survives northern winters from New England to Minnesota.

http://www.ibiblio.org/london/orgfar...y.by-R.E.Gough

-----------------------------
Have you ever heard of lingonberries? People in Minnesota have known about it forever, you betcha!

http://www.gardengirltv.com/lingonbe...landscape.html

OK, I stand corrected. My source did not mention them growing in MN. That said, "On the Banks of Plum Creek" took place near Walnut Grove Minnesota. Minnesota biomes vary widely from boreal forests and bogland in the north to tallgrass prairie in the south. Walnut Grove is in the Prairie zone and a totally different type of biome than the northern biomes that all my sources say that lingonberries grow in.

[Paumon]

Cathleenc - I've never heard of frost berries in reference to any other kind of berry except for lingonberry and when I googled images of frost berries I found several images of lingonberries. Your location says you are in Wisconsin so you should have no trouble finding one or two suitable cultivars of lingonberry that will grow very well in your location.

The Dutch farmers in this area sometimes refer to their cultivated lingonberries as frost berries so it's possible the immigrant Swedes of Minnesota in Laura's time may also have referred to them that way. Lingonberry was an important staple food of the Swedish, Dutch and German people. The Swedish immigrant farmers who settled Minnesota in the 1800's probably brought their own cultivars with them and planted them just as many of the Dutch who settled the (zone 10) Fraser Valley here brought theirs. The seeds are easily spread by birds to grow wild.

[kyweaver]

Keep in mind that Laura wrote those books sixty years after the fact, and often mixed things up, often for dramatic purposes.

[kfander]

I don't know if lingonberries are native to Minnesota but I don't know why they wouldn't grow there, or why they wouldn't grow wild. Lingonberries grow well in northern states, with cold climates, and they love being ignored. Other than weeding around them some while they are being established, there isn't much that needs to be done to a lingonberry plant. Except perhaps in exceptionally dry summers, they don't like supplemental watering, and fertilizing them is generally not a good idea.

I planted a dozen or so of the plants along the driveway of my home in Millinocket, Maine, planting them in soil that was at least fifty-percent peat moss, the rest being regular topsoil. My house and yard is built on coal ash from the paper mill that founded the town, so preparing soil is necessary whenever anything is to be planted.

I planted them early in the spring and, by summer, I had my first crop, if crop is a word that can reasonably be used to describe the output from a dozen plants. I picked and ate them, actually. Another, larger, crop came toward the end of summer or early fall.

My cat pulled one of them up, in her attempt at providing unauthorized fertilizer beneath the plant. That one died, but I added a bird-deterrent mesh to the bed and that kept the cats out of it.

I covered them with peat moss before the first snow, then buried them with the snowblower throughout the winter. When the snow melted, there they were, green and healthy, except for one that didn't make it through the winter, probably harmed more by the compression of the packed snow than by the cold itself.

I've been up at my other property a few hours north of there since early spring but I stopped by the Millinocket house a couple of days ago, and found that they have blossomed, and that I have a few new plants, more than replacing the couple that were lost.

By the way, it's best to mix at least two varieties together, I am told. I planted, I think it was, five different varieties of lingonberries along my drive.