🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Cowberry

Nature · Shrubs

Cowberry

Native · evergreen, to 30 cm · flowers late spring · upland heath and moor

Vaccinium vitis-idaea — Ericaceae

Cowberry is the evergreen cousin of the bilberry, a low, glossy-leaved shrub of exposed upland heath and mountain summits whose tart red berries are the lingonberry of Scandinavian cooking. It is widespread in the Scottish uplands and northern England, and rare and declining at the southern edge of its range in the Durham Pennines. Its scientific name means 'vine of Mount Ida'.

How to spot them

  • ▸Evergreen, leathery, oval leaves, dark glossy green above and paler beneath with tiny black glands
  • ▸Low, creeping subshrub to about 30 cm, spreading by rhizomes
  • ▸Pale pink bell flowers in small nodding clusters at the shoot tips, only a few per cluster in Britain
  • ▸Bright red, tart berries, which become sweeter after frost
  • ▸Look-alikes: bilberry is deciduous with green angular stems and blue-black berries; bearberry has leaves without black glands and with a netted vein pattern

How to know it

A low evergreen with leathery oval leaves dotted with black glands beneath, and tart red berries, on exposed upland heath

Cowberry — Vaccinium vitis-idaea.

Its species name means 'vine of Mount Ida', and its red berries are eaten as a sauce with meat in Scandinavia

Cowberry, or lingonberry.

Unlike its blue-berried cousin, it keeps its leaves through the winter and bears red fruit

Cowberry versus bilberry.

Widespread in upland Scotland but rare and declining in the Pennine uplands of County Durham

Cowberry.

Its English name is described as a nineteenth-century mistake, from confusing its genus name with the Latin for cow

Cowberry.

The berries are high in vitamin C, and are said to have antiscorbutic properties

Cowberry — protecting against scurvy.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Vaccinium vitis-idaea, family Ericaceae; 'vitis-idaea' means 'vine of Mount Ida'
  • •An evergreen subshrub of about 30 cm with broad oval leathery leaves, dark green above and paler with black glands below (BSBI)
  • •Widespread in upland Britain, most in Scotland; in England most abundant in the south-east Pennines and Cumbria, and rare and declining in Durham (BSBI)
  • •Grows on acid soil, on wind-exposed scarps, rocky heaths and summits
  • •Flowers sparingly in Britain, only one to three blossoms on each nodding cluster (BSBI)
  • •Berries are sharply tart until frosted; the fruit has valuable antiscorbutic properties (BSBI)
  • •BSBI describes the English name 'cowberry' as a nineteenth-century error, from confusing the genus name with Latin for cow
  • •The berries are the lingonberry of Scandinavian cooking

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources