at pH 3.2–4.5). The cranberry can self-pollinate, al-though bees increase fruit yield, and for this purpose bee colonies are frequently brought into cranberry bogs during flowering. A variety of natural pol-linators has been reported, most important of which are bumble bees. The berries of V. macrocarpon are dispersed by water and shore birds. Muskrat and deer are also fond of the berries.
Medicinal Uses
European colonists appreciated the value of cranberry in warding off scurvy (a legitimate me-dicinal use, since the berries are high in vitamin C). Cranberry also acquired a folk reputation as a treatment for urinary tract problems, and this ap-plication has also been validated. Cranberry is a strong diuretic (promoting urination), and the juice is often prescribed as dietary treatment for urinary tract infections, kidney disorders and other condi-tions where the passing of fluids is desirable. Many women suffer from cystitis, an inflammation and (or) infection of the bladder, at some time in their lives, with as many as one in five women estimated to have urinary tract discomfort at least once a year.
Cystitis is most frequently caused by bacteria that travel from the urethra, and because women have a shorter urethra which is more easily contami-nated by organisms from the vagina and surround-ing areas, urinary tract infections are about 50 times more common in females than in males.
Antibiotics are an effective therapy, but antibiotic use sometimes results in adverse reactions, can be costly, and can lead to the development of resis-tant organisms. Cranberry can be used both as a preventive and as an adjunct treatment for urinary tract infections. Cranberry juice therapy may re-quire drinking a liter (or pint) of straight cranberry juice daily, which few are willing to do. Fortu-nately cranberry capsules are easily swallowed.
Consumers should be aware that some of the
“cranberry juice” on the market may have much sugar and water added, but the pure form or a concentrate is likely to be more beneficial. In ad-dition to preventing urinary tract infections, cran-berry is reported to have the added benefit of deodorizing the urinary tract.
There are several theories to explain why cran-berry is effective for maintaining urinary tract health: cranberry juice may make the urine more acidic, and the bacteria that cause infection are not likely to flourish in an acid environment (there is relatively little support today for this explanation);
cranberries may cause relatively large amounts of
the bacteriostatic hippuric acid to be excreted in the urine; components of cranberry juice may in-terfere with the ability of bacteria to stick to the lining of the bladder and urethra, and so they are washed away in the urinary stream. The last inter-pretation is generally favored today. It appears that the most common bacterium responsible for urinary tract infection, Escherichia coli, produces constitu-ents known as adhesins to anchor to tissues, and that there are anti-adhesin factors in cranberry juice.
Preliminary tests conducted by University of Wisconsin researchers have suggested that cran-berry juice may have an anti-oxidant effect on clogged heart arteries, thus reducing cardiovascu-lar disease.
Toxicity
Cranberries are not considered toxic. Drinking more than 4 liters a day can result in diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems.
Chemistry
Cranberries are extremely high in vitamin C, moderately high in vitamin A, and quite high in fiber and anthocyanins, all components that have health-giving qualities. Hippuric acid is an impor-tant medicinal constituent of the fruit, as the metab-olism of this compound produces low pH urine, unlike most other fruits, which as noted above may explain why cranberry juice is a useful urinary
Vaccinium macrocarpon (cranberry)
antiseptic. (Compare our treatment of bearberry, which is effective as a urinary antiseptic only if the urine is alkaline.)
Non-medicinal Uses
Cranberries have long been in demand as a food plant. The fruit was prized by Native Americans, who used it in many ways, including in pemmi-can, a dried mixture of animal fat and fruit, which was the precursor of the dehydrated foods used by present-day hikers during camping trips. Benzoic acid in the berries likely aided in preservation. To-day, cranberries provide a tasty sauce to accom-pany meat and poultry, as well as being incorporated in salads and numerous products, in-cluding juice, cocktails, pies, tarts, jellies and pre-serves. The cranberry is a beautiful fruit, and this has led to its use especially during the Christmas and Thanksgiving festive seasons. Most cranberries are frozen for storage or marketing.
Agricultural and Commercial Aspects Cranberry culture was developed in the New World. Henry Hall of Dennis, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, was the first to cultivate the crop, at the beginning of the 19th century. Commercial (engi-neered) bogs became common soon after that. By the late 19th century, commercial cultivation had spread north to Nova Scotia.
The center of cranberry cultivation and produc-tion is Massachusetts, but considerable quantities are also raised in the peatlands of British Colum-bia, New Jersey, Washington and Oregon. Consid-erable cranberry culture also occurs in Wisconsin, and in limited degree in Ontario, Quebec, and the maritime provinces. In Canada native people have harvested cranberries on a small scale for many years, for example in the Parry Sound region of Ontario. For a long period the major area of cran-berry production in Canada was Lulu Island at the mouth of the Fraser River. Currently in Canada cranberry growing is carried out primarily in the lower portions of the Fraser River Valley of Brit-ish Columbia, an area near Drummondville Que-bec, and in several parts of Nova Scotia. There are over 1000 cranberry growers in the United States, utilizing almost 14 000 ha and producing over $1 billion in retail sales annually. Ocean Spray Inc., a growers’ cooperative comprising 950 cranberry and grapefruit growers in the US and Canada, markets about 90 percent of the cranberries grown in North America.
Cranberry bogs
Cranberries are confined to cool, moist regions, and culture of them is largely restricted to acid soils along the edges of streams and ponds, and in bogs of temperate North America. Cranberry cul-ture is a highly specialized form of small fruit production. Although cranberries are adapted to moist habitats, too high a water level encourages rushes, sedges and other competing plants, which then crowd the crop and interfere with pest con-trol and picking. Sphagnum bogs are unsuitable until drained and the substrate allowed to decay to muck. Muck soils are particularly suitable because of their moisture-holding capacity. Cranberries have also been successfully planted on relatively dry soils near the sea, where relatively low summer temperatures retard evaporation. Bogs are occa-sionally built on sand or clay with little or no muck, but these usually require considerable fer-tilization, normally supplied by the decaying or-ganic matter.
The development of a cranberry bog is a com-plex operation requiring considerable capital out-lay. Typically a series of planting beds about a ha in size, serviced by a single reservoir of water, is laid out. A cranberry bog is usually established by pressing stem cuttings into the surface of a freshly sanded bed. A coating of sand is provided annu-ally or every 2 years. Sand is a favorable rooting medium, suppressing weeds, and protecting the plants from mild frosts by holding absorbed heat from the sun. Cranberry bears some fruit in the second and third season, but 3–5 years are neces-sary for full production. Because of high labor costs and a short picking season, mechanical har-vesters are widely used. Bogs are typically flooded at harvest time to a depth of 15–20 cm. The ber-ries are shaken off the bushes and as they float on the surface they are easily raked or vacuumed into containers for cleaning and sorting. All of these operations can be carried out by some mechanical harvesters. Flooding during the winter season is to protect the plants from freezing damage (encasing the vines in ice insulates the buds against winter injury). Properly maintained bogs are almost per-manent, some plantings remaining productive for over 75 years. Yield usually ranges from 8 000 to 10 000 kg/ha.
Cultivation
Pests of cranberry crops may account for al-most 35% of field costs. The pests include at least 26 insects, 35 fungi, 6 nematodes, several viruses, and many weeds (mostly grasses and sedges), as
164 Canadian Medicinal Crops
well as two parasitic dodder plants (genus Cuscuta).
Larvae of the cranberry fruit worm moth consume the berries. These and some of the fireworm moth pests can be effectively controlled by appropriate cycles of flooding. Frost damage has been a major cause of periodic crop losses. Yield of cranberries has increased by five times between 1909 and the present due to gradual and continuous improve-ments in management, including frost injury pre-vention, improved harvest technology and modern control of pests. The substantial increases in pro-ductivity have been stimulated by a combination of scientific research and producer innovations.
The future
In 1955 20% of US households used cranberry juice products. By 1985 this had increased to 70%, and the popularity of cranberry continues to ex-pand. There has been concern that environmen-tally sensitive wetlands might be eliminated or damaged by development of new cranberry bogs, but technology is available to control damage to wetland sites, and even to develop bogs on dryland sites. Demand for the fruit has almost always ex-ceeded the supply, keeping prices high. However, the potential for increasing productivity is good.
There are a number of locally adapted cultivars, and newer hybrid cultivars are expected to become increasingly available as a result of accelerated breeding programs. Experts have suggested that considerable improvements could be realized with a sustained breeding program for insect resistance, as well as other traits. A wealth of information on cultivation procedures exists in books and regional agriculture department pamphlets. Current mar-kets are reported to require several thousand hect-ares of new plantings in the near future, and demand is expected to continue to increase. Al-though the cost of initial establishment is rela-tively high and costs are not recovered quickly, cranberry appears to be a good investment. With a large potential area of cultivation in the eastern provinces and British Columbia, cranberry could become a much more important Canadian crop.
Myths, Legends, Tales, Folklore, and Interesting Facts
•
“Cranberry” is a corruption of “crane-berry,” an early American name for the plant. The flower bud was said to resemble a crane (the slender curving pedicel, calyx and corolla of the flower bud, before it opens, respectively simulate the neck, head and beak of a crane).•
The Pilgrims on arriving in the New World ob-served cranberries growing profusely in the area about Cape Cod, and noted that the Indians used the fruit as a source of a brilliant red dye for their clothes.•
Damaged cranberries often sink in water, so that simply washing berries in water can reveal the superior berries. Another method that has been recommended to judge the quality of cranberries is to bounce them: the more times they bounce, the better the berry (http://www.kiwiseed.com/library/112097/112097.htm).
•
The “CraisinTM,” a dried, sweetened cranberry, is currently being marketed in breakfast cereals and fruit mixes by Ocean Spray Inc.•
At least 700 consumer products contain cran-berries in one form or another.•
Although most cultivated cranberry is used to produce juice, about 50 million kg of cranberry sauce is consumed in the US each year.•
A sauce was made with white cranberries as a prelude to a new marketing strategy, but it was of an amber color and had an insipid taste. Be-cause the dark pigments of the fruit contribute substantially to the taste and medicinal quality of cranberries, the value of white cranberries is debatable.•
In 1959 many cranberry growers in the United States applied the weed killer aminotriazole pre-maturely, before the cranberries were harvested, rather than following the usual practice of wait-ing until the crop was removed. As a result the berries were contaminated. The incident led to sensationalistic publicity after it was disclosed that the chemical was capable of producing can-cer in mice, and the resulting suspension of cran-berry sales led to millions of dollars of losses for the cranberry industry.•
In 1970, cranberry juice was named the state beverage of Massachusetts. A fifth-grade class adopted the cause of making the cranberry the official berry of the state. Their 2 years of lob-bying, petitions, and hearings were finally re-warded in 1994.Selected References
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World Wide Web Links
(Warning. The quality of information on the internet varies from excellent to erroneous and highly misleading. The links below were chosen because they were the most informative sites located at the time of our internet search. Since
(Warning. The quality of information on the internet varies from excellent to erroneous and highly misleading. The links below were chosen because they were the most informative sites located at the time of our internet search. Since