Bluebarries in many store-bought “blueberry” muffins: blue coloring with bits of minced grape skins for convincing texture.
The most interesting part is the wild ones are even better for you than the store bought. Much more concentrated nutrients in all wild foods.
Anyone who spends time in nature will tell you about varietals. You are being deliberately aggravating against readily accessible fruit. It’s still fruit. It’s still healthy. It’s strange you would gatekeep berries.
chill bro the post made no statement about which is better. you instantly value judged a picture of two heaps of berries
You can get both of these at my grocery store. Right next to each other. Sometimes the same brand, sometimes different. I grew up eating off the tree/large bush and found all different sizes on the same tree. Main difference is the flavor.
They are different species after all, another difference could be seen slicing them and putting them side by side, the pulp should have a different color too
Or storebought blueberries and wild bilberries?
I’m not a native speaker of English, and I’ve only recently learnt that the ‘blueberries’ I grew up foraging from the woods are in fact bilberries. Which is kind of interesting because although most people will call them blueberries, we have a regional name for them, ‘brimbelles’, that’s kind of similar to bilberries when you squint your eyes.
It’s the same in Finland, I was raised thinking that I was eating blueberries when they were, in fact, bilberries.
You did eat blueberries. In Scandinavian languages bilberries are called blueberries (blåbær, blåbär), because what Americans calls blueberries didn’t exist there (the American sort was only introduced to Europe in the 1930s).
English isn’t alone in deciding what is a blueberry and what isn’t.
We’re eating mustikka over here, which translates to bilberry in english. The “blueberries” are pensasmustikka in finnish.
So really we should be calling those insipid, watery grape-sized ‘blueberries’ impostors. It ain’t a blueberry if it doesn’t stain your mouth purple!
The wild North American blueberries (there are multiple species) are also small and flavorful. The giant, watery ones are a bred variety that you won’t find in nature
I stand corrected.
Huh, TIL!
*not shown - flavor is inverse to size.
Not exactly true. Too small they’re bitter, too big they’re bland. There’s a sweet spot in the middle.
There’s a sweet spot in the middle.
The pulp, yes
Odds are the ones on the left are Driscoll’s genetic berries. Neat youtube documentary on Driscoll’s monopoly on the berry market.
High bush vs low bush blueberries. They’re so different they may as well be a separate berry.
There’s also rabbiteye, which are similar to high bush but have lower cool hour requirements. Maybe it’s a subtype of high bush, but horticulturists around my area note a distinct difference in them.
Do you call them that because the bushes themselves look different?
The wild sort grow in low shrubs up to maybe mid-shin whereas the one you bu from the garden centre is more of a bush
Yeah, they are like chest to face high, depending on your height.
Thanks! TIL
♬I found my thrill
On Blueberry Hill ♬Damn. Nature doesn’t stand a chance!
