Cranberries and trailing evergreen leaves 'What are those red berries?’
From the board-walk we look beyond bog myrtle and heather, down onto wetter ground with sphagnum moss. Our location is Foulshaw Moss and here is the peat bog of a lowland raised mire. I reckon she’s found cranberries in a zone where sphagnum moss meets heather. And in a tangle of vegetation I glimpse tiny pink flowers – I had not expected to find cranberry flowering in early September. Here are flowers and trailing leaves, tiny pale green fruit and ripe red berries to be discovered.
From the board-walk we look beyond bog myrtle and heather, down onto wetter ground with sphagnum moss. Our location is Foulshaw Moss and here is the peat bog of a lowland raised mire. I reckon she’s found cranberries in a zone where sphagnum moss meets heather. And in a tangle of vegetation I glimpse tiny pink flowers – I had not expected to find cranberry flowering in early September. Here are flowers and trailing leaves, tiny pale green fruit and ripe red berries to be discovered.
We see red berries but I know there will be much more to discover when I've downloaded images and can zoom-in and delve deeper. And I'll be in a reverie of cranberries I have known when I delve into memory and my photographic archive and revisit sites I've discovered, different locations, different seasons and with different friends.
Cranberry is a low-creeping evergreen sub-shrub. Its network of deep green leaves trails over the sphagnum mosses, often easier to see than its fruit which can nestle half-hidden in sphagnum and show as brownish and speckled or as rounded and glossy red. There are a few ripe red cranberries and many more unripe berries, pale green and pinkish, nestling in the sphagnum.
Cranberry is a low-creeping evergreen sub-shrub. Its network of deep green leaves trails over the sphagnum mosses, often easier to see than its fruit which can nestle half-hidden in sphagnum and show as brownish and speckled or as rounded and glossy red. There are a few ripe red cranberries and many more unripe berries, pale green and pinkish, nestling in the sphagnum.
Cranberries show both fruit and tiny pink flowers. The flowers’ long stalks are the colour of cranberry juice. When fully open, the pinkish flowers have reflexed petal-lobes. Today's images are not sharp, the flowers are tiny and too far off but I can see the form of the flower. On 19th June 2014 I found cranberry flowers on sphagnum mounds on East Baugh Fell and I knelt before them in reverence and photographed these tiny exquisite flowers.
It's a delight to find cranberry in fruit and flower at Foulshaw and to share the find- I knew what they were but would not have seen them, they’re well hidden. Cumbria Wildlife Trust wouldn't want visitors to step off the boardwalk, to protect the flora but also to protect ourselves. Foulshaw and Roudsea Mosses have hidden peat-workings, unpredictably deep and sometimes flooded.
It's a delight to find cranberry in fruit and flower at Foulshaw and to share the find- I knew what they were but would not have seen them, they’re well hidden. Cumbria Wildlife Trust wouldn't want visitors to step off the boardwalk, to protect the flora but also to protect ourselves. Foulshaw and Roudsea Mosses have hidden peat-workings, unpredictably deep and sometimes flooded.
At the winter solstice in 2013 I came upon ripe red cranberries cushioned in wine-red sphagnum moss. Frosted sphagnum and glossy red cranberries on 19th December!
My first and best cranberry find on the fells exists only in memory, I was a fell walker and naturalist but I took photographs in a more casual way so I have no record of what I then saw. In a watershed zone there were hummocks of sphagnum moss and a net of trailing cranberry stems was spread over them, I've never seen so many cranberries. The green leaves on those long trailing stems will turn red later in autumn so the plant is beautiful through the seasons .
My first and best cranberry find on the fells exists only in memory, I was a fell walker and naturalist but I took photographs in a more casual way so I have no record of what I then saw. In a watershed zone there were hummocks of sphagnum moss and a net of trailing cranberry stems was spread over them, I've never seen so many cranberries. The green leaves on those long trailing stems will turn red later in autumn so the plant is beautiful through the seasons .
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