232 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



while carota is the Latin word for the plant, and as 

 venerable as the other, the generic title. 



CRANBERRY (Vaccinium Oxycoccos) 



Growing luxuriantly on the peat mosses and boggy 

 moorlands and in the fen country one may find the beautiful 

 little Cranberry. Though recorded as far south as Sussex, 

 its true home is in the northern counties, since it is there 

 that the conditions are most freely found that are essential 

 to its well-being. Many districts, too, in the eastern fenlands 

 that once bore it abundantly know it no more, since drainage 

 and the subsequent cultivation of the land have entirely 

 changed the local conditions. Many beautiful bog plants 

 are on this account approaching extinction, and such splendid 

 butterflies as the Swallow-tail are growing much scarcer 

 than one at all likes to contemplate. One of the results 

 is that while England used once on a time to grow all 

 her own cranberries, they are now, being largely used in 

 matters culinary, imported in immense quantities, over 

 fifty thousand gallons a year, from Russia, Spain, Germany, 

 Hungary, and Sweden. What are also called cranberries 

 come very freely from the United States of America. 

 They are not, however, quite the same, but a closely-allied 

 species, Vaccinium macrocarpa, growing much more erect 

 than the true cranberry, and having larger berries. 



The cranberry creeps over marsh and fen, seldom 

 growing more than three or four inches high, and spreading 

 very freely. It has a goodly number of names descriptive 

 of its habitat, being known in different parts of the country 

 as the marsh-wort, marsh-whortleberry, fen-berry, fen- 



