Nature Picks: Cranberries and Sundews

The Thanksgiving holiday is commonly associated with food, and while turkey is often the main dish, cranberries, Vaccinium macrocarpon, are a complimentary side.

Cranberries grow in extremely precise conditions, needing wetland bogs to thrive. Bogs are found in cooler northern climates and often develop in lake basins created by glaciers, according to the National Geographic Society. Bogs tend to be oxygen and nutrient poor, making them uninhabitable for many plant species, but cranberries grow on trailing vines that utilize the sand, peat, and gravel found in bogs. The sand helps to support the cranberry vines while inhibiting weed growth.

In the United States, cranberries grow especially well in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. Montana does not offer a climate conducive to growing cranberries, which need a growing season from April to November, though the state is home to the unrelated and non-native American Cranberrybush, Viburnum opals, which is actually a member of the Honeysuckle family.

Montana does have a variety of wetland and riparian systems, including the Rocky Mountain Subalpine-Montane Fen, a type of wetland similar in many ways to bogs. While fens are somewhat uncommon, the Montana Field Guide notes that they are well distributed in small patches across Montana. Fens are sorted into poor fens, rich fens, and extremely rich fens, based on water levels, quantity of peat, and mineral accumulations, among other factors. Similar to bogs, fens are often found on glaciated plains, or areas where glaciers passed through.

Fens support a broader ranger of plant life than bogs, which in Montana includes three varieties of the cranberry-colored sundew: English Sundew, Drosera anglica; Roundleaf Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia; and Slenderleaf Sundew, Drosera linearis. Sundew are carnivorous herbs that use sticky leaf hairs to trap insects. The nitrogen found in the insects helps the plants survive in the harsh conditions of the fen, which do not have much available nitrogen.

All three varieties of sundew can be found in northern Lewis and Clark County, with the Roundleaf Sundew being the most common variety in the state. However, all three plants are listed by the Montana Field Guide as either species of concern or potential species of concern.

Roundleaf Sundew range from 3-20 cm tall and feature round leaves at the end of unbranched, leafless stems. Each leaf is surrounded by a sunburst of deep red stalked glands that are used to trap insects. The bright red stalks lure insects, including flies, beetles, ants, bees, and wasps. The insects are caught by the long, sticky glands at the edges of the leaves, while shorter glands secrete digestive enzymes, according to the Montana Field Guide. The leaves sometimes fold over on themselves to help hold the prey in place.

With Christmas dinner coming up in less than a month and often closely resembling the Thanksgiving meal for many families, this historic recipe for cranberry sauce may be just the thing to add to the holiday table.

Mrs. E.A. Mergel's "unfailing recipe for a most delicious cranberry sauce, very fine with turkey and game" can be found in the Ladies Aid Society cook book published in 1917 in Butte. https://mtmemory.recollectcms.com/nodes/view/5980#idx39108