The plants are deciduous perennial shrubs that range in size from 60 cm (24 inches) tall for lowbush blueberries (Vaccinium angustifolium) up to 4 metres (13 feet) tall for highbush (V. corymbosum) cultivars.
Last year, as usual, Hackenberg spent the spring ferrying his hives from Pennsylvania, where the bees pollinated apples, to Maine, where they worked lowbush blueberries, to upstate New York, where they fed on clover, and finally back to Pennsylvania, where they pollinated pumpkins.
Just beyond was the thicket of sassafras and lowbush blueberry shrubs.
A March fly rests on one the stem of a lowbush blueberry.
We are, too!" They smiled and continued down slope, past a bank of lowbush blueberries and white wood asters.
These areas support native plants like lowbush blueberry and Juneberry that prefer the bluffs' acidic soil.
But I think a more attractive species is the lowbush blueberry, V. angustifolium, which grows up to two feet tall.
The smaller fruits of the lowbush are commercially harvested in Maine for jelly and jam by minimally tending plants in their native habitat with occasional burns to reduce weeds and rejuvenate the bearing plants.
In autumn, the leaves turn vivid scarlet, and anyone who has seen the Maine countryside blanketed by the fiery foliage of lowbush blueberry would not doubt its decorative potential.
The lowbush is just as brilliant, and it requires no pruning at all.
But for gardens designed for beauty, not bounty, cranberries, along with some of their cousins like the lowbush blueberry, are overlooked jewels.
