ABSTRACT
The lingonberry is circumpolar and circumboreal, occurring worldwide in northern temperate, boreal, and subarctic areas. The species is widely distributed in Eurasia. Lingonberry grows in a great variety of situations, most often in infertile, acidic ground, including peat. Soils occupied are often rocky, but the plants are also common in sandy and clay loams. In North America, the species occurs in jack pine stands, spruce forests, raised bogs, muskegs, dry rocky barrens, lichen woodlands, and in a wide range of exposed habitats including heaths, high moors, headlands, tundra, cliffs, and mountain summits. The lingonberry is a low, creeping shrub, with diffusely branched, slender sterns growing horizontally on the surface of the ground. Lingonberry is a familiar wild fruit in northern Europe, where its harvest and processing are well established, and there is continuing breeding of improved cultivars. Lingonberry fruits have been described as “shaped like blueberries but acid like cranberries.”.
