Left: Vaccinium spelled with blueberries; Right: Blueberry cross section.
We’ve got blueberries on our minds and in our mouths. We recently bought a flat at the Fremont Sunday Market, and we’ve been seeing blueberries and their relatives, huckleberries, quite a bit on our hikes in the Cascades. It thus seems right to honor Vaccinium (the genus name for blueberry) in a Binomen Art piece.
Quattrocchi on the origin of Vaccinium:
Vaccinium (Plinius), a Latin name for the blueberry, whortleberry, a corruption of the Greek hyakinthos “the hyacinth, purple, dark red,” Bakinthos; Akkadian bakkitu “professional mourner, paid mourner,” bakku “lachrymose,” bakum, bikitu “lamented”.
Wikipedia says explicitly “It is not the same word as vaccinum ‘of or pertaining to cows.”
The blueberries used in the photos here are from Hayton Farms, and they are set in front of our small blueberry bush (Vaccinium x ‘Sunshine Blue’ - Southern Highbush). Our bush does produce nice berries when we get to them before the blue jays and robins. The blueberries from Hayton Farms are likely Vaccinium corymbosum, the most common commercially grown blueberry. Regardless of where the blueberries come from, they go into a pile of fruit on our morning muesli.
Left: Morning Muesli with Blueberries; Center: Blueberries Close Up; Right: Binomen Art
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