It’s likely that you only think about cranberries in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, although thankfully for the industry, cranberry juice is sold year-round for the possible benefit of reducing the risk of UTIs. The Pilgrims ate cranberries in some for at the first Thanksgiving because they were in New England, where cranberries grew wild and ripened at the right time. They were great at preventing scurvy. But cranberries as a crop are relatively new. They weren’t cultivated until 1816!
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Cranberries reproduce by exchanging pollen with other plants, or by fertilizing itself, or by cloning. Each ripe cranberry has four air pockets inside it that allows it to float on water, which makes harvesting them by flooding cranberry bogs a relatively simple matter. It also makes them bounce when you throw them, which is another way to tell if they are fresh. Those are just some of the things that make cranberries unique, but you can learn quite a bit more about this Thanksgiving staple at The Conversation.
(Image credit: The Agricultural Research Service)
Source: neatorama