Wild Blueberry

Vaccinium angustifolium

Maine wild blueberries are small, sweet-tart berries with concentrated flavor. Their lowbush plants spread naturally across barrens and fields.¹

Northeast notes

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

Further notes

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

Footnotes

1. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Maine’s Native Berry,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩²

2. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “About the Maine Wild Blueberry,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩

3. University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Organic Wild Blueberry Production,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩