I always wondered what people around the Flathead called Huckleberrys, when they would go picking in the fall and end up with Blue Berrys. Huckleberrys are tiny little berrys on low lying bushes and it takes an afternoon to pick a cup full. Today while we were grouse hunting we saw plenty Huckleberrys, picked a few and ate them...

are you still alive?

We ate Huckleberrys, not mushrooms...

Close call...some of those berries are as bad as mushrooms

Although a weekend next to the Hollywood Hillbillies was nearly fatal...

We have at least three kinds of huckleberries here, and many other edibles as well.

Round here they're red, blue, or black. Vaccinium genus.

same with Montana, all a huckleberry is, is a western blueberry though one notable difference between the eastern and western types is for some reason none of the western types take to domestication so its pretty near impossible to plant them where you want them to grow, they are a wild edible only for the most part....

well maybe not quite all as i know where you can buy some PNW huckleberry plants regularly but as far as i know none of the Rocky Mountain species survive transplanting/putting where you want them well at all.....but you can get wild eastern blueberries and set up a patch pretty easy comparatively...

I agree. Someone else on here who fancies himself as an expert on all things MONTANAN claims to know where huckleberry bushes are growing to 6 feet tall.

Every huckleberry I ever picked was from a ground laying bush that you had to pick up the branches on the plant to pick the few tiny berries underneath. Spend all morning to pick just enough to make a batch of huckleberry pancakes and maybe a little left over to put on ice cream.

This post is really making me hungry for huckleberry pie.

though i dislike the guy technicaly he is right, what he described is either the globe huckleberry, (Vaccinium globulare) or the big huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum)...unless he is a real idiot and picking june/service berries which taste pretty good but arent in the huckleberry class..what you and shrap are calling huckleberries are likely the dwarf huckleberry (Vaccinium cespitosum) the grouse whortleberry (Vaccinium scoparium) or the bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) they are small plants that can have red berries like shraps pic...there are two other big species but they are pretty localized and not common even where they are found

im guessing shraps pic is of scoparium

Picking huckleberries?

Pfffffttt

We buy them for $30 bucks a gallon at the fruit stand.

Huckleberries that we have here in Arkansas are just little blueberries. Taste pretty much the same but are way smaller and grow wild in most places where there are woods. We would sometimes pick them when I was a kid but it takes a long time to get many. We also have one that we call winter Huckleberry that is ripe in early winter and is not very juicy. Taste good if you can find enough to eat. The bush is bigger on the winter variety but the berry is still small. miles

We have loads of them around the place in Idaho. The first I had of them was back in '68 all over our property in Mendocino County. Every year Mom used to make pies with them in the cabin wood stove.

We put up 10 pints of Huckleberry jam last night! Bushes near 5ft tall most 3-4 ft tall. Color a deep redish purple. Took 3 of us 3.5 hours to pick. Wife most likely ate more than she picked but still managed to pile 'em up. Elevation was right about 4000 ft on the southern slopes of Mt.St.Helens in SW Washington. Down at camp there were patches of red huckle berries.

Swedish Pancakes tomorrow. Huck milkshake last night. handful of hucks on my Cheerios this morning. My toast for a couple months to come will have some spread on them. Hopefully going back for more this weekend. Lot's of bear scat but we didn't see any bear.

Love 'em...

Swedish pancakes with HUCKLEBERRIES? They ain't Swedish pancakes without Lingonberries!

Are those aka currants?

Never heard of calling blueberries anything but blueberries.

If the real huckleberries are anything like The Real Hawkeye, I'd avoid them. Too much exposure will cause a headache.

or the runs!

Does talkin about huckleberry pickin remind anybody other than me of the Patrick McManus chapter about same??

Damn he's a funny guy..

I grew up picking service-berries in NoDak. We called them "juneberries", but they mostly ripened in July... Have found a few on the Kenai Peninsula.

Blueberries are all over Alaska. Up here just the low bush is all I've found, but on the Kenai, i've found high bush as well. All look/taste same as commercial, just smaller and more tart. Also more intense flavor.

The huckleberries I know I learned in Northern Idaho. Bluish-red on 3-5 foot high bushes.

I know where there is exactly one bush of same on the Kenai. Have no clue how it got there, and I ain't telling where..... : but it is in the back-of-beyond.

The three are distinctly different.

Fun thread,...

I'm wondering where the delightful, and revered Saskatoon Berry fits into alla' this though.

....those that the "Hutes" didn't obliterate with their GD over picking.

GTC

saskatoon/service/june berries are a different genus, Amelanchier....they arent even really related to each other....saskatoons are in the rose family and huckleberries/blueberries are in the heath/heather family....but like huckleberries or blueberries there are a number of species and all kinds of varieties.....