Bilberry

Bilberry is a low deciduous shrub of the family Ericaceae, usually under half a metre tall, that spreads by creeping rhizomes over acid heaths, moorland and open woods across most of Europe and northern and central Asia, with outposts in Greenland and western North America. Its small leaves turn red in autumn, and its round berries ripen a deep blue-black under a greyish bloom; unlike the highbush blueberry, the fruit is coloured right through, and its juice stains hands and lips. In Britain the berries long served to dye food and cloth, and during the First World War dyers bought up much of the crop. The Anglo-Saxons called it the hart's berry. Irish custom read a heavy crop as the sign of a good harvest, and at Lughnasadh people in County Limerick laid bilberries and flowers on the cairn atop Knockfierna, the hill of a faery king; patches where the berries grew were thought of as places where the faery folk might be met. Culpeper put the plant under Jupiter. In magic it is used for luck, to ward off evil and to undo hexes and curses, and to make dreams come to pass; Kynes also sets the berries or their jam on the Lughnasadh altar.