Vaccinium macrocarpon

Vaccinium macrocarpon, known as the large cranberry, the American cranberry and the bearberry, is a North American species of cranberry placed in the subgenus Oxycoccus. It is a perennial shrub that is often ascending: it trails along the ground for some distance and then curves upwards. The leaf blades are narrowly elliptic to elliptic, one to two centimetres long, glaucous underneath and green on top. Slender, nodding flower stalks two to three centimetres long carry white or pink flowers with four petals, which are followed by sour-tasting red or pink berries nine to fourteen millimetres across. The plant is native to central and eastern Canada, from Ontario to Newfoundland, and to the northeastern and north-central United States, reaching south through the Appalachians to North Carolina and Tennessee. It is also naturalized in parts of Europe and in scattered places along western Canada and the western United States. The berries are edible and the species is grown commercially as a cash crop, often in wetland soils of alternating organic and sand layers and harvested by flooding the fields and gathering the floating berries. They are used for sauce, jelly, juice and dried fruit. The name cranberry comes from the shape of the flower stamen, which looks like a crane's beak.