Cloudberry / WILD FOOD FOR FREE




The cloudberry, a relative of the blackberry.
They can be picked at big bogs, mostly in the North of Sweden.
Cloudberries, slightly sweetened with sugar and just heated are superb to vanilla icecream. We also use cloudberry jam to pancakes together with whipped cream. Another speciality is Swedish curd cake with cream and cloudberry jam



The cloudberry plant (Rubus chamaemorus), also named bakeapple or salmonberry outside UK, is less then 30 cm (12 inch) tall and generates just one white flower, thus just one fruit.

First, the fruit is red and hard, but while ripping, it gets a golden or amber color and turns soft and juicy.

The name cloudberry alludes to the fact that in the UK, it only grows in northern mountains surrounded by low clouds.

But the real home of the Ice Age plant is the Arctic tundra, moors, bogs and marshlands.





In southern Scandinavia, the fruit matures in august, but in the remote north at the beginning of the fall.

For centuries, the Laplanders and Inuit
 (Eskimos) collected the cloudberries to be consumed during winter. 



The berry is rich in various vitamins, especially vitamin C, and, as it has a natural preservative, the marmalade can be kept in good condition for years in cool places.




As in the northern lands vegetable food is scarce, the meat and fish based diet of the northern people received an important vitamin supplement through cloudberries.

That's why cloudberries are also called "the gold of the marshlands".

Currently, huge quantities of these fruits are collected for supermarkets and food industry.