SMALL CRANBERRY.
_Vaccinium Oxycoccus._
There’s not a flower but shews some touch
In freckle, freck or stain,
Of His unrivalled pencil.
HEMANS.
THERE is scarcely to be found a lovelier little plant than the common
marsh Cranberry. It is of a trailing habit, creeping along the ground,
rooting at every joint, and sending up little leafy upright stems, from
which spring long slender thready pedicels, each terminated by a
delicate peach-blossom tinted flower, nodding on the stalk, so as to
throw the narrow pointed petals upward. The leaves are small, of a dark
myrtle-green, revolute at the edges, whitish beneath, unequally
distributed along the stem. The deep crimson smooth oval berries are
collected by the squaws and sold at a high price in the fall of the
year.
There are extensive tracts of low, sandy swampy flats in various
portions of Canada, covered with a luxuriant growth of low Cranberries.
These spots are known as _Cranberry Marshes_; these places are generally
overflowed during the spring; many interesting and rare plants are found
in these marshes, with mosses and lichens not to be found elsewhere, low
evergreens of the heath family, and some rare plants belonging to the
Orchidaceous tribes, such as the beautiful Grass-pink (_Calopogon
pulchellus_), and _Calypso borealis_.
Not only is the fruit of the low Cranberry in great esteem for tarts and
preserves, but it is also considered to possess valuable medicinal
properties, having been long used in cancerous affections as an outward
application—the berries in their uncooked state are acid and powerfully
astringent.
This fruit is successively cultivated for market in many parts of the
Northern States of America, and is said to repay the cost of culture in
a very profitable manner.
So much in request as Cranberries are for household use, it seems
strange that no enterprising person has yet undertaken to supply the
markets of Canada. In suitable soil the crop could hardly prove a
failure, with care and attention to the selection of the plants at a
proper season.
The Cranberry forms one of the sub-orders of the heath family
(Ericaceæ), and its delicate pink-tinted flowers are not less beautiful
than many of the exotic plants of that tribe, which we rear with care
and pains in the green-house and conservatory; yet, growing in our midst
as it were, few persons that luxuriate in the rich preserve that is made
from the ripe fruit, have ever seen the elegant trailing-plant, with its
graceful blossoms and myrtle-like foliage.
The botanical name is of Greek origin, from _oxus_, sour, and _coccus_,
a berry. The plant thrives best in wet sandy soil and low mossy marshes.
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[Illustration: _PLATE VI._]
1 LILIUM PHILADELPHICUM
(Wild orange Red lily)
2 CAMPANULA ROTUNDIFOLIA
(Harebell)
3 CYPRIPEDIUM SPECTABILE
(Showy Lady’s Slipper)
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