Living in a Caddisfly Case: Part Five

 By Cassie Sevigny

Later in 2018 I joined a WEN field trip with students in Ronan, northeast of Missoula. Near Flathead Lake, I added it to my mental map. On the drive we admired the Mission Mountains through thin haze of smoke. Wildfire season had started somewhere. I thought of the trees burning, the morels and foliage that would sprout afterward. We passed through Arlee, where the freeway splits around the town. “Huckleberry pies and shakes!” a sign announced.

“Oh, I love huckleberries,” Deb said. “Have you ever been huckleberry picking?”

“No,” I said. I don’t like huckleberries. They taste too much like blueberries. I don’t like to reveal this in Montana, just as I keep my dislike of seafood quiet when I’m in Seattle.

“We have to pick huckleberries from nature,” Deb continued. “We can’t grow them. No one’s figured out how to farm them yet. People have tried all sorts of things – planting seeds, transplanting bushes from the wild, changing soil chemistry, burning the area first – nothing works.”

One possible reason for this difficulty is that huckleberries can grow via rhizomes, which are underground, root-like stems that extend from the original structure. Sprouts grow off these sideways stems, appearing to be a new plant. Since they aren’t real roots, a cut and transplanted piece of rhizome won’t sprout, disconnected from its main plant body. In addition to proper planting from root or seed, huckleberries require a unique combination of pH, moisture, nutrients and climate provided naturally in mountainous regions prone to wildfires. Once a bush is established, it takes several years to produce the berries. All of these difficulties don’t mean it’s impossible to grow huckleberries commercially someday, but for now they remain wild.

Until then, we must collect all of our huckleberries from the woods, filling buckets like technologically advanced bears. Some people harvest with rakes to reduce the time and tedium. This method gathers more berries faster than handpicking one by one, but the bushes are left damaged.

“I don’t know why anyone would want to damage the bushes, we only have so many and just have to hope they grow back the next year,” Deb complained. She got so caught up in talking about huckleberries, we forgot to stop for shakes.