Huckleberries ready for picking

A Taste of Summer

Big, juicy, purple huckleberries plucked right off the bush. Nothing tastes better.

The trick is to find them. Most people have their secret spots to go pick huckleberries, for good reason too. Huckleberries don’t just grow everywhere.

Huckleberry plants love damp, acidic soil and sunshine. Huckleberries also prefer higher altitudes, most often between 3,500 and 7,200 feet, though they can grow anywhere between 2,000 and 11,000 feet.

In order to fruit prolifically, huckleberries need abundant sunlight and warmth. This is why huckleberries are typically found in clear cuts, avalanche chutes, 20- to 50-year-old burns, and older, open, high-elevation forests. 

Huckleberries thrive in old burns because the fire creates ashy soils with a lot of nutrients and high acidity. However, huckleberry plants may take up to 15 years to reach full maturity. So they aren’t like morels, which grow profusely the year after a forest fire.

Huckleberry crops are semi-dependent on the weather. If it is a cool, cloudy spring, bees and other insects don’t have enough time to pollinate the short-lived blossoms, which bloom between May and July depending on elevation.

This results in a less productive year. Also, huckleberry plants don’t tolerate extremely cold temperatures without snow cover. They need at least one to two feet of snow to survive.

No matter how productive the huckleberry crop is every year, we still have to share it with bears, deer, birds, rodents and insects. Both grizzly and black bears love huckleberries, with huckleberries making up one-third of their diet at times.

While bears don’t distinguish between berries, we can. Some people use the words huckleberry and blueberry interchangeably. However there are distinct differences between the two.

First of all, huckleberries have 10 large seeds, whereas blueberries have numerous tiny seeds. The large seeds of the huckleberry give it a slightly crunchier texture than the blueberry.

Another difference is in the color of the flowers, with huckleberries having pink flowers and blueberries typically having white flowers. The color of the berries also differs with blueberries being blue and huckleberries ranging from bright red to dark purple.

No matter what you call huckleberries or where you find them, they sure are delicious.

Laura Roady is owner of Roady Outdoor Photography and is a freelance photographer and writer. She can be reached at 267-5397 or at roadyphoto@gmail.com.