40 Fun Facts About Blueberries

Which world leader took the stage at a 2010 children's charity concert to sing Blueberry Hill with a jazz band?

Vladimir Putin sang the old standard in Saint Petersburg, backed by saxophonist Maceo Parker's band. He also picked out part of the tune on the piano that night.

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Violet Beauregarde turns into a giant blueberry after trying which Wonka sweet?

Chewing gum is her obsession, and Wonka's unfinished stick packs a three-course dinner that goes wrong at the blueberry pie dessert. Roald Dahl's early drafts called the girl Violet Glockenberry.

After praising Hammonton as the blueberry capital of the world in 1984, Ronald Reagan went on to hail which rock star?

Bruce Springsteen comes from the same state as Hammonton, and the president's campaign stop tried to borrow his glow. The singer soon distanced himself from the politics.

Which tart red fruit, a fellow member of the heath family, shares the genus Vaccinium with the blueberry?

Cranberry vines and blueberry bushes are such close cousins that the first blueberry farm was planted in the gaps between a family's cranberry bogs.

Every commercial blueberry, wild lowbush or cultivated highbush, is native to which part of the world?

North America kept the blueberry to itself until the 1930s, when highbush plants were first shipped to Europe. Farms in the Southern Hemisphere followed decades later.

Which New Orleans pianist turned the 1940 song Blueberry Hill into a rock and roll standard with his 1956 recording?

Fats Domino made it the biggest hit of his career, taking it to number one on the R&B chart. Rolling Stone later ranked his version among the 500 greatest songs of all time.

Which company sold its 1999 desktop computers in fruit colours including Blueberry, Grape, Tangerine and Lime?

Apple launched the first iMac in a single shade, Bondi blue, before the fruit colours arrived in January 1999. Its designers had taken inspiration from colourful candy dispensers.

In the picture book Blueberries for Sal, which animal's cub ends up following Sal's mother across the hill?

Bear and child each wander off and trail the wrong mother while eating berries on the hillside. Author Robert McCloskey modelled Sal and her mother on his own daughter and wife.

Which toaster pastry brand counted blueberry among its four original flavours when Kellogg's launched it in 1964?

Pop-Tarts arrived without icing, because none could yet survive a toaster. Kellogg's solved that and sold the first iced ones in 1967.

Which US state made the wild blueberry its official fruit and blueberry pie its official dessert?

Maine's wild blueberry growers pick only half their fields each year. The other half is resting after pruning, because the low bushes fruit on a two-year cycle.

The powdery, whitish wax that coats the skin of a ripe blueberry is known to growers by what name?

Bloom is a protective coating the fruit makes for itself, not a spray residue. The same kind of whitish film forms on the fruits and leaves of many other plants.

Botanist Frederick Coville was first to discover that blueberry bushes will only thrive in what kind of soil?

Acidic ground with a pH between about 4.2 and 5.2 is what wild blueberries prefer, far sourer than most crops tolerate. Coville also showed that the bushes do not self-pollinate.

In which Canadian province are people from the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region nicknamed 'bleuets', meaning blueberries?

Quebec freezes some 95% of its wild blueberry crop to ship beyond the province. About a fifth of the harvest is still picked in public forests instead of on farms.

Which General Mills monster cereal, launched nationally in 1973, was the first blueberry-flavoured breakfast cereal?

Boo Berry joined Count Chocula and Franken Berry two years after the monster line began. Since 2010 all three have been sold only for a few months around Halloween.

Blueberry Muffin is a recurring friend of which cartoon character, who began life on greeting cards in the 1970s?

Strawberry Shortcake first appeared on a Valentine's Day card. Her blueberry-themed friend is drawn as either a carefree ditz or an avid reader, depending on the series.

Which month, the peak of the harvest, is celebrated as National Blueberry Month in the United States?

July is when the American harvest peaks, and the federal government proclaimed the whole month National Blueberry Month.

In which US state did Elizabeth White and Frederick Coville harvest the first cultivated blueberry crop in 1916?

New Jersey's first cultivated crop went to market under the name Tru-Blu-Berries. White had paid local woodsmen for each wild bush they found with big enough berries.

Which European cousin of the blueberry has red or purple pulp that can stain the fingers, lips and tongue?

Bilberry fruit grows singly or in pairs instead of in clusters, another way to tell it from its transatlantic relative.

Blueberry flowers, usually white or pale pink, hang from the bush in which distinctive shape?

Bell is the classic shape, and the little blossoms open five or six to a bud, each able to swell into a berry.

Wild blueberry growers traditionally renew their fields every few years using which dramatic pruning method?

Burning clears rival shrubs and fertilises the soil, and the fire-tolerant plants come back in greater numbers. In Acadian French a blueberry field is a brûlis, from the word for burnt.

Which family of pigments, named from Greek words for flower and dark blue, gives blueberries their colour?

Anthocyanins can look red, purple or blue depending on pH. Wild lowbush blueberries hold more of them than the bigger cultivated kind.

Which insects shake pollen out of blueberry flowers by vibrating, a technique known as buzz pollination?

Bumblebees grip the flower and buzz to loosen pollen that is held tightly inside. Honeybees cannot perform the trick at all.

Blueberries belong to the heath family, Ericaceae, alongside which showy flowering garden shrub?

Rhododendron and its azaleas share the family with the heathers. Many of its members are typical of peat bogs, where few other shrubs cope.

The open fields where wild lowbush blueberries are managed instead of planted are known by what name?

Barrens are never sown: the bushes arrive on their own and farmers simply tend them. In some places the plant takes over naturally and blankets large areas.

Frederick Coville, the botanist who helped tame the wild blueberry, was chief botanist of which US department?

Agriculture department scientists went on to build a blueberry breeding programme from his work, based partly at Beltsville, Maryland.

Elizabeth White chose which material to package her blueberries after seeing it used as a candy wrapper?

Cellophane was an idea she borrowed straight from the sweet shop. White's ashes were later scattered by aeroplane over the family farm where she had bred her berries.

Which Midwestern US state named the blueberry muffin its official state muffin?

Minnesota adopted it in 1988 at the request of a third-grade class in Carlton. The children picked it for the wheat grown in the state's south and the wild blueberries of its north.

Oxford, a town known as the wild blueberry capital of Canada, lies in which Atlantic province?

Nova Scotia's small town holds the world's largest processor of quick-frozen wild blueberries. Its plant can handle up to three million pounds of berries a day in peak season.

Which singer made her acting debut opposite Jude Law in the 2007 road movie My Blueberry Nights?

Norah Jones was the director's first choice despite having no acting experience. He called her a natural and told her not to take lessons.

Which New England poet included a poem called Blueberries in his 1914 collection North of Boston?

Robert Frost first published the collection in London, not at home. Its success persuaded a publisher back in the United States to pick up his earlier book the following year.

Blueberries for Sal, Robert McCloskey's 1948 picture book, was named an Honor book for which award?

Caldecott Medal judges gave the book its Honor in 1949. McCloskey later returned to Sal and her mother in a sequel set a few years on, adding her father and younger sister.

Which French artist, also famous under the pen name Moebius, drew the long-running Western comic series Blueberry?

Jean Giraud was a fan of Westerns from boyhood and sold his first cowboy strips at just 18. His hero, Mike Blueberry, is neither a wandering lawman nor a handsome cowboy.

Which rapper reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Blueberry Faygo, a song named after a soft drink?

Lil Mosey only gave the track an official release after fans begged for it on social media. It is built on a sped-up sample of a 1990 Johnny Gill song.

Racers in Sweden's Vasaloppet are traditionally served blåbärssoppa, a wild blueberry soup, in which sport?

Cross-country skiing for 90 kilometres calls for fuel, and the soup is prized for being rich in energy. Swedes and Finns also serve it to people with an upset stomach.

'Blaeberry' is the traditional name for Europe's wild blueberry cousin in the dialects of which country?

Scotland also left the earliest known written use of the word blueberry, in an act of its parliament from 1594.

Blueberries are a moderate source of vitamin C, vitamin K and which mineral?

Manganese aside, the fruit is mostly water: about 84% of it, with only 57 calories in a 100-gram serving and almost no fat.

Which Boston-based department store chain had an in-store bakery famous for its blueberry muffins?

Jordan Marsh drew shoppers with far more than baking: it also staged fashion shows, art exhibitions and even afternoon concerts.

Which English rock group's 1970 show at the Los Angeles Forum became the famous bootleg Live on Blueberry Hill?

Led Zeppelin fans prize the audience tape as one of the first rock bootlegs ever made. It captures a rare live outing for a track from the band's third album.

Wild blueberry plants spread into large patches by sending out which kind of underground stem?

Rhizomes let one mother plant creep outward into a broad patch that growers call a clone. Each clone is genetically distinct, so neighbours can differ in colour and flavour.

Which Canadian province grew 94% of the country's cultivated highbush blueberries in 2024?

British Columbia dominates the tall cultivated bushes, while the low wild kind is an eastern crop. Together they made blueberries the country's second-largest fruit crop that year, behind apples.