Vaccinium membranaceum / thinleaf huckleberry

Adjectives: clonal, drought tolerant, edible, interesting bits, LSRP, native, nutrient poor soils, rocky, shrub, understory

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If you know where a patch of huckleberries grows, the common selfishness—I mean, wisdom—is that you keep it secret so you can be the one to harvest them in July or August. That makes some sense, if you’re a huckleberry fan and live in the limestone soil part of Wydaho. If you’re in an area with soils of quartzite or granite  origin, it’s probably not so important because they tend to be a keystone species and dominant understory shrub in Douglas Fir dominated forests. Unfortunately, it’s mostly the east side of the Tetons that falls in that category.

Western huckleberries, or just huckleberries, are in the same genus as blueberries, and both the flowers and fruits look like those. They’re not quite “just” blueberries, however, although that is debatable. The difference is that huckleberries produce single berries in the axils of leaves on new shoots while blueberries produce clusters of berries on year-old wood. An upshot of this is that blueberries have greater yields.

Although huckleberry bushes may be as tall as 4 feet, locally they are usually much shorter. Of all the understory shrubs, huckleberry is the only one with alternate leaves, red/yellow twigs-of-the-year, and almost-smooth-edged leaves. The leaves are also very thin (hence V. membranaceum).

Each of the solitary flowers is small, no more than ¼” long. They are more or less urn shaped, like other members of the heath family, and pale pink or white. The fruit is an actual, proper berry, ranging in color from bluish-purple to almost black. Each berry contains around 50 seeds that are so tiny that they’re unlikely to get stuck in your teeth. The plants rarely reproduce from seed, however. Rather they spread as clones using rhizomes or rooting of the shoots.

One key word here is “rarely.” The seeds do germinate if dispersed by animals. An interesting example of this is the populations growing in the recovering section of Mount St. Helens.

Interesting bits – As any huckleberry fanatic will tell you, V. membranaceum (and its Cascade/Olympic relative, V. deliciosum) is richer in flavor chemicals than domestic blueberries. Partly, that is because they are smaller and those chemicals are in the “skin”.

Huckleberries are a key food source for black and grizzly bears. Besides the fruit, however, they eat the leaves, stems, roots. This is worth keeping in mind when you harvest… not just because the bears could get testy if disturbed, but because every berry you take is one fewer for them. Elk, moose, and white-tailed deer also browse the shoots. And huckleberry thickets provide cover for many species of small animals.

Huckleberries have been very hard to domesticate or cultivate, in part because they take up to 15 years to start producing fruit.