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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Cloudberry

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  • From: Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Cloudberry
  • Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:28:28 -0500

From "Shrubs of Ontario" by James H. Soper and Margaret L. Heimburger (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1982) page 235:

Rubus chamaemorus L. (Linnaeus)

Cloudberry, Bake-apple, Baked-apple berry.

A low herbaceous perennial with slender, creeping, woody rhizomes covered with brownish papery bark, dioecious. Stems upright, unbranched, and unarmed, 1-3 decimetres high, bearing leaves in the upper 1-3 nodes and stipules only at the lower nodes.

Leaves alternate simple and deciduous, the somewhat leathery blades rounded to reniform, 4-11 com wide, with 5-7 rounded lobes and rather shallow sinuses; margins serrate with blunt teeth; stipules sheathlike, especially the lower pairs; petioles 2-8 cm long.

Flowers unisexual, 2-3 cm diameter, solitary, and terminal on long peduncles; calyx lobes pubescent and glandular, sometimes lacerate or fringed; petals white and wide open in the mature flower; June and July. Fruit 1-2 cm in diamweter, composed of a few large-seeded drupelets, at first reddish, then turning amber to yellowish, soft and translucent when ripe, falling quickly from the dry receptacle, edible, with a pleasant distinctive flavour. ("chamaemorus" - from the Greek "chamae," on the ground, and the Latin "morus," the mulberry tree, in reference to the dwarf habit and mulberrylike fruit)

Chiefly in sphagnum mats and hummocks, in black spruce bogs and muskegs, and on mossy tundra.

Restricted to northern Ontario from the shores of Hudson Bay and the islands in James Bay (N.W.T.) to the north shore of Lake Superior, not collected in Ontario south of 48 degrees N.
(Greenland to Alaska, south to B.C., and east to Ont. and N. Eng.)

*****

On the map of Ontario, the southern edge of the distribution runs from the American border along the Pigeon River to and along the north shore of Lake Superior to about Marathon, thence east to Lake Abitibi.

Some years ago I read of a First Nations project in Labrador, to collect cloudberries in the wild and ship them by air to urban markets, the first leg by helicopter. I never heard that it became operational.
I have read that the fruit is quite delicate and perishable.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada



Sarah Kehler Ewing wrote:
Hi folks,

I'm wondering if anyone on here knows anything about Cloudberries. I'm also
looking for a commercial source for Cloudberry plants or seeds.

English: cloudberry
German: Moltebeere, Torfbeere
Canada, USA (Alaska): cloudberry, bakeapple
Scientific Names

Species: Rubus chamaemorus L.
Family: Rosaceae



I found some Cloudberry jam at Ikea and, aside from being too sweet like
almost all commercial jams, we thought it was really good. They resemble
large yellow raspberries and their seeds is also like large raspberry seeds!
The information I found online mentioned their hardiness and the fact that
they grow naturally in Canada and other Northern countries.

Thanks,
Sarah Zone 3, Edm, AB




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