Черника обыкновенная: описание, свойства и применение.

Berry and plant

Vaccinium myrtillus or European blueberry is a holarctic species of shrub with edible fruit of blue color, known by the common names bilberry, blaeberry, wimberry, and whortleberry. Leaves are long and ovate to lanceolate or broadly elliptic in shape. hurtleberry, myrtleberry, wimberry, whinberry, winberry, and fraughan.

Vaccinium myrtillus is a Holarctic species native to continental Europe, the British Isles, north and central Asia, Japan, Greenland, Iceland, Western Canada, and the Western United States. It occurs in the acidic soils of heaths, boggy barrens, degraded meadows, open forests and parklands, slopes, and moraines.

The fruits will stain hands, teeth and tongue deep blue or purple while eating and so it was traditionally used as a dye for food and clothes in Britain.

Vaccinium myrtillus has been used for centuries in traditional medicine, particularly in traditional Austrian medicine as a tea or liqueur in attempts to treat various disorders. Bilberry dietary supplements are marketed in the United States, although there is little evidence these products have any effect on health or diseases. In cooking, the bilberry fruit is commonly used for pies, tarts and flans, cakes, jams, muffins, cookies, sauces, syrups, juices, and candies.

Bilberry and the related V. uliginosum both produce lignins, in part because they are used as defensive chemicals. V. myrtillus contains a high concentration of triterpenes which remain under laboratory research for their possible biological effects.