The cultivation of Vaccinium by immigrant Europeans first began in the early nineteenth century when cranberry farmers in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts started building dykes and ditches to control the water levels in native stands.
The American cranberry is a diploid perennial species with a natural distribution ranging from Newfoundland to the southern Appalachian Mountains, and extending west to Minnesota.
These vines were usually transplanted to a swampy area where they were cultivated and the berries were eventually harvested. Cranberry is adapted to moist, acidic soils, peat bogs, marshes, and swamps with a temperate climate. It is found growing with other species adapted to the conditions in these environments, including sphagnum mosses, other ericaceous shrubs, graminoids, insectivorous plants, and widely scattered coniferous trees.
The name cranberry was given by early German and Dutch as its flower resembled the head and bill of the crane. It is a dwarf shrub and is used as fresh fruit, juice, sauce and also as medicine. It contains polyphenols, vitamins, flavonoids and other rare phytochemicals. Vaccinium macrocarpon can be use medicinally to increase antioxidant levels within the body.
The American cranberry is a particularly rich source of (poly)phenols, which have been associated in vitro with antibacterial, antiviral, antimutagenic, anticarcinogenic, antitumorigenic, antiangiogenic, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties.
American cranberries
