This article was originally featured on The Conversation.
Cranberries are a staple in U.S. households at Thanksgiving–but how did this bog dweller end up on holiday tables?
Compared to many valuable plant species that were domesticated over thousands of years, cultivated cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is a young agricultural crop, just as the U.S. is a young country and Thanksgiving is a relatively new holiday. But as a plant scientist, I’ve learned much about cranberries’ ancestry from their botany and genomics.
New on the plant breeding scene
Humans have cultivated sorghum for some 5,500 years, corn for around 8,700 years and cotton for about 5,000 years. In contrast, cranberries were domesticated around 200 years ago–but people were eating the berries before that.
Wild cranberries are native to North America. They were an important food source for Native Americans, who used them in puddings, sauces, breads and a high-protein portable food called pemmican–a carnivore’s version of an energy bar, made from a mixture of dried meat and rendered animal fat and sometimes studded with dried fruits. Some tribes still make pemmican today, and even market a commercial version.
Cranberry cultivation began in 1816 in Massachusetts, where Revolutionary War veteran Henry Hall found that covering cranberry bogs with sand fertilized the vines and retained water around their roots. From there, the fruit spread throughout the U.S. Northeast and Upper Midwest.
Today, Wisconsin produces roughly 60% of the U.S. cranberry harvest, followed by Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey. Cranberries also are grown in Canada, where they are a major fruit crop.
A flexible and adaptable plant
Cranberries have many interesting botanical features. Like roses, lilies and daffodils, cranberry flowers are hermaphroditic, which means they contain both male and female parts. This allows them to self-pollinate instead of relying on…
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