Farmers in Australia were left “stoked” when they noticed that among the blueberries they picked, there was one as big as a golf ball and weighing significantly more than average.
The giant blueberry, which is 39.31mm wide and weighs 20.4 grams - much more than the average of between 1 gram and 3.5 grams - was picked at a farm in Corindi, New South Wales, in November last year. On Tuesday, Guinness World Records publicly declared it the biggest blueberry in the world - a title previously held by a 16.2 grams berry with a diameter of 36.33mm grown in Western Australia.
I bet it tastes like shit. The difference between wild blueberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) and something like a blue huckleberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is like a night and day. The bigger the berry the blander the taste. This applies to strawberries aswell. Wild strawberries (Fragaria vesca) are significantly sweeter tasting than garden strawberries.
Wild strawberries taste like tiny pieces of strawberry flavored hay. They’re tiny and they don’t taste good. That’s why we farm strawberries.
Vaccinium Corymbosum is just the bush form of the blueberry plant, which occurs naturally (in my yard) and in much of North America. It’s not Blue Huckleberry.
Blue Huckleberry is unrelated, and is actually Gaylussacia Frondosa.
Cascade Bilberry is a member of the Blueberry family and is colloquially called Cascade Huckleberry, or Vaccinium Deliciosum.
Vaccinium Myrtillus is the European variant which is also naturally occuring, and is more commonly called just Bilberry.
Neither is more domesticated, both are used in farming depending on location.
The effect you’re thinking of is the difference between chemical ripening and sun ripening. White Strawberries and pale blueberries (with poor flavor profiles) are signs of chemical ripening in a warehouse somewhere.
So true. If the ones in the store are all big, I make sure to not buy em.