Blueberries and Bilberries come from the same family, the Vaccinium family, making them relatives of other famous berries like the Cranberry, Lingonberry, and Huckleberry. They’re a family that’s spread through out the world, making their homes in virtually all the climates Mother Earth has to offer. So what makes Blueberry specifically special?
Blueberries and Bilberries are intimate relations, sharing virtually all the same medicinal qualities and growing or cultivation needs. Modern herbal researchers have focused on Bilberries, which are native to Europe, and much of the modern herbal references we have to the medicinal uses of Blueberry come from Traditional Western Herbalism, which is also native to Europe.
With all that said, Blueberries have a strong and some might say more magical place in Herbal History. Before they were cultivated in North America, Blueberries came in two primary varieties: High bush and Low bush. Both were well known to the many Native Peoples of North America.
Blueberries were an important forage fruit of many tribes throughout Turtle Island or North America long before European settlers arrived. Most if not all tribes were at least somewhat nomadic in nature, so they were far less focused on cultivating crops of Blueberries farm-style as later Americans did. Instead, they encouraged Blueberry growth in the wild, and benefitted from the surprising durability and medicinal properties of this wild shrub.
Blueberries made a terrific trail food partly because they dry so well and partly because they stay tasty and viable beyond many of the other native and more perishable fruits North American forest and fields had to offer. Besides being eaten dried and fresh as-is, Native People added them to soups and stews, used them to flavor and preserve meats, and used Blueberries boiled or decocted as a cough syrup. Tea made from Blueberry leaves was used as an anti-spasmodic to ease muscle cramping, including and maybe especially the kind women face during their child-rearing years.
Although documentation on the whys behind Native American use of Blueberry for medicine is sketchy at best. Modern research alongside both traditional use of the European Blueberry (aka Bilberry) points to Blueberry fruit as a powerful antioxidant, helping to reduce inflammation throughout the body. This can benefit a variety of diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but mainly requires whole fruit consumption as opposed to taking a tea or extract. Blueberry leaf tea has been connected to supporting healthy insulin and blood sugar balance, making it particularly good for folks with pre-diabetic and diabetic conditions. Chances are high that Native Peoples used their Blueberries and the teas they made from Blueberry leaf and root to care for and prevent similar conditions as well as for their nutritional value.
So, What in All That Makes Blueberry so Magical as Compared to its European Cousin?
The connection that Blueberry helped build between peoples in those early days is part of the magical nature of Blueberry in North America. Early settlers learned a lot from the Native Peoples about Blueberry as both a food and medicine. The kindness and healing those Tribal Elders and Medicine People offered to settlers helped to set a foundation that, in time, can re-emerge as a healing bridge between those two disparate cultures.
To really understand the powerful and magical connection Blueberry helped create, you need to understand two important pieces of Blueberry’s story. First, Blueberry had been wild-cultivated by Native People for centuries. Blueberries like wide, open, sandy expanses of slightly acidic soil with plenty of sunshine. Early Native tending practices included controlled burns of Blueberry fields every few years. The burns cleared out older, less fruitful shrubs to allow new growth to spring up. Blueberry thrived, always returning even after having been burned to the ground.
The second piece of Blueberry’s story you need to understand relates to the non-human animals who sought Blueberry medicine. Bears, specifically, are rather strongly connected to the Blueberry. Grizzly and Black Bear both will travel miles for Blueberry during the Blueberry season. They eat pounds upon pounds, happily standing for hours on end picking each berry carefully with their giant finger-like claws. This alone is a sign that Blueberry is an important food, of course. But, Bears are Big Medicine in the lexicon of many Native cultures. Bears are connected to Herbal Healing, Medicine People, and all traditions that involve healing. That the Blueberry is such a prized food and medicine for the primary Medicine People in North America, the Bears, raises the importance of Blueberry in creating a foundation for healing.
With those two factors in mind, the importance of Blueberry to Bears and the ability of Blueberry to rebuild and thrive after having been burned to the ground, you can see how magical and important that early sharing was between Native American Peoples and the new European Settlers. In sharing Blueberry, they created a foundation for healing and connection that can survive even after having suffered devastation and destruction.
Blueberry offers us all hope for a better future, no matter how dire today’s suffering may be.
Blueberry Magic
Blueberry grows where others find the conditions a trifle hostile. She likes acid soil, sandy or rocky areas as well as the edges of forests with full or part-sun. Blueberry is adaptable, willing and able to fruit where others barely survive. That’s because Blueberry’s magic is about building the kind of footing that endures anything. Blueberry Magic is Resilient.
Resilience and Recovery are part of what Blueberry does best. She may be burned to the ground one season, but she’ll be back the next with waves of flowers for the Bees and fruits for Bears. Even when she’s been trampled and burned and had to fight back through adverse conditions, Blueberry is generous. She treats life as a gift, and offers her gifts to all those with the will to show up. Blueberry magic is the magic of Healing and Generosity built on that resilience. Blueberry knows what it is to suffer, and chooses generosity again and again anyway.
That’s how Blueberry teaches us to Heal Old Wounds and find our personal resilience, by walking the path with us. Blueberry is as much a Teacher as a Healer. She heals through her own trials, no matter how hard they may be, and offers up a bounty of fruits despite or maybe even because of them. She teaches us to cherish the hardships and be joyful when times are good. Blueberry projects are those that flourish after having had one or more burn-it-to-the-ground moments, offering a bounty of abundance and wealth after radical transformation or directional-changes.
If you’re working on a project that maybe once was fruitful but now seems to have grown stale, perhaps it’s time to invoke a little Blueberry Magic. Consider letting it go entirely, allowing the worst to come to pass as you burn it to the ground and let it go. If the energy for it keeps niggling at you, turning up a year later in some other form or as a persistent tug, consider following it just like Bear would do. If it’s a genuine Blueberry Project, you’ll find the sweet spot after perhaps a bit of travel, and the bounty there will sustain you for a very long time.
Blueberries can fruit for half a century, once established. Establishing a Blueberry project may take a season or two, during which time you’ll only see the faint glimmer of flower and fruit to come. Blueberries generally reach their full fruiting capacity somewhere in years six to eight, after which they tend to flower and fruit in abundance for decades. Look for a slow start followed by many steady seasons of abundance in your Blueberry project. Blueberry is the magic of of Endurance, offering season after season of plenty, and Hope for an abundant and fruitful future.
Blueberry is considered Feminine and is dominated by the Moon. It’s elements are Earth and Water.
