Vaccinium angustifolium
Maine wild blueberries are small, sweet-tart berries with concentrated flavor. Their lowbush plants spread naturally across barrens and fields.1
Lowbush blueberry is native to northern New England and Atlantic Canada; Maine’s crop grows in naturally occurring fields rather than conventional planted rows.1
Wabanaki people managed and harvested wild blueberry fields at scale, including through burn-pruning. During the Civil War, Maine blueberries were sent by sea to the Union Army.2
A wild blueberry field is not one uniform planting. The plants spread underground into patches called clones, and each patch is genetically different; a single field can hold hundreds or thousands of them. That mosaic is one reason berries from the same field can differ in color, size, ripening time, and flavor.3
Blueberry skin holds much of the fruit’s anthocyanin color, while spicy terpenes contribute to its aroma. Those pigments are sensitive to alkalinity, which is why baking soda can push blueberries in muffins toward an unexpected green.4
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Maine’s Native Berry,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “About the Maine Wild Blueberry,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Organic Wild Blueberry Production,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩
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Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, rev. ed. (Scribner, 2004), PDF p. 376. ↩