I’ve been weirdly fixated on trying to find the wild blueberries from my childhood and I’m hoping someone here might know what variety/species they were.
My family used to go to my grandparents cabin every summer somewhere near Wawa/on the Magpie River (I’ll attach a screenshot of the general area because I don’t know the exact location). We went every year from when I was literally 3 months old until I was 13. These berries are just burned into my brain as THE definition of a blueberry.
The cabin was down a really long dirt road that used to be for logging, and there were nearby clearings where wild blueberries grew. The ground was basically straightup sand with decaying wood chips sprinkled in. The bushes were tiny, like maybe 15cm tall, but on good years they were loaded with so many small berries.
I barely remember exactly what they tasted like anymore, just that nothing I’ve had since tastes the same. U-pick blueberry farms near me in Michigan grow northern highbush varieties and their tast just isnt even close.
Last year, I bought some rabbiteye varieties (pink lemonade and powder blue) for my apartment balcony but i'm still fixated on figuring out what variety my childhood ones were. I found a grower in Indiana (Backyard Berry Plants) selling wild-type blueberries from the south shore of Lake Superior. But I have no idea if berries from the MI's UP would actually taste similar to what grows farther north near Wawa.
Does this sound like a specific type of wild blueberry to anyone? Are the wild blueberries around Lake Superior mostly all the same species, or do northern ones taste different?
Part of this is probably nostalgia brain, but I’d love to get as close as possible to growing these someday.