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In rural Poland it's a common seasonal activity to gather them in forests in July, you get whole family go to the forest for a few hours and gather enough to ma
by ajuc 3y ago
In rural Poland it's a common seasonal activity to gather them in forests in July, you get whole family go to the forest for a few hours and gather enough to make 1 or 2 meals for the whole family (some people freeze them but it's not the same). Pierogi with "forest blueberries" is the quintessential summer food.
Some people make a business out of it, gather them whole day and sell them. But I've never seen them in malls, just in street markets and people selling them along the roads in season. I think they don't keep long enough for markets - you have to eat them by the day after the gathering.
We also have the "american blueberries", they are farmed industrially, and some people have them in their gardens (my grandparents for example). They are nice, but nowhere close to the real thing.
There's also 2 different species of wild forest berries, but I'm not sure how they are officially called in English (my grandmother called them "borówki" and "łochinie", but even in Poland it's regional names, most people don't know what a "łochinia" is :) ).
- kzrdude 3y agoWhen buying frozen blueberries (forest blueberries of course) in Norway however, they are often marked as picked in Poland, so there is someone making a business out of it.
- jltsiren 3y ago"Łochinia" seems to be the bog bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum). They have a milder taste than bilberries. You sometimes find them in forests in Finland, but I've never seen anyone selling them.
- kzrdude 3y agoThese should be well known by nature people but I don't hear them discussed much. Today, because of this discussion, searching for some info, I found this interesting trivia observation someone blogged about: you can use bog bilberry to clean the color off your bilberry blue fingers. The explanation likely being that they are slightly acidic (it's hard to remove with just water and soap.) https://www.godt.no/aktuelt/i/eK1GOO/baeret-som-fjerner-blaabaerfarge https://www.godt.no/aktuelt/i/eK1GOO/baeret-som-fjerner-blaa... These berries have many names in scanidinavia too, but in norwegian I would know them as «skinntryte».
- ajuc 3y agoThere's "jagoda", "borówka" and "łochinia" and the mapping from names to fruits switch in every region :). My grandma called bog billberies - "borówka", and "łochinie" were smaller, elongated blueberries with slightly green insides. They were less sweet and more tart than regular "jagoda". I think this is what she called "łochinia", but it grew in the forest so I'm not sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_caerulea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_caerulea