VACCINIUM MACROCARPON. AMERICAN CRANBERRY. Ill 



is none other name for them known.' " There appears to be 

 no doubt that the name was introduced from Holland. 



The family name Vacciniiim is frequently used by Virgil, the 

 old Latin poet, but what particular plant he had reference to 

 does not seem clear. Dryden, indeed, in his translation of the 

 writings of Virgil, appears to have had the idea that the poet 

 had a flower in mind rather than a fruit. The early botanists, 

 however, applied the name to the Cowberry, Vaccinium Vitis 

 Idcea, but in so doing they apparently confounded Vaccinium, the 

 fruit of the whortle, and vaccinum, that which belongs to a cow. 



There is some little controversy among botanists as to the 

 genus to which our species belongs. Many protest that it is not 

 a Vaccinium at all, and therefore call it Oxycocciis (Greek for 

 sharp berry, from the sharp or acid taste of its fruit), which is 

 the name given to the true Cranberries by Persoon, a distin- 

 guished botanist of the beginning of the century. Dr. Darling- 

 ton, in his "Flora Cestrica," remarks: "I have followed Dr. 

 Gray, and others, in reducing this to a section of Vaccinium, 

 though I think there are many admitted genera based on more 

 slender foundations." The chief points relied on for distin- 

 o-uishing Oxycocciis from Vaccinium are found in the corolla 

 and the fruit. In Vaccinium the corolla is split into four long, 

 narrow, and recurved segments, and its fruit is in four divisions 

 (Fig. 3), without the false partitions which make the fruit of 

 other allied plants appear as if they had more cells. 



Of the "true" Cranberries there are several species; and of 

 these the American Cranberry, to which this chapter is devoted, 

 Vaccinium macrocarpon, or Oxycocciis marcrocarpus, according 

 to the author whom we may follow, has much the largest fruit. 

 It is this fact to which it owes its specific name, macrocarpon 

 being Greek for "large-fruited." Mr. Thomas C. Archer, a well- 

 known English author on economic botany, says that "the 

 American Cranberries somewhat resemble red currants, but are 

 more than twice as large, and have no remains of the calyx at 

 the top of the berry," and no one will accuse Mr. Archer of 

 having exaggerated the size. 



