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"The name huckleberry, which is applied
indiscriminately to several species of Vaccinium and
Gaylussacia," says Professor L. H. Bailey, "is evidently a
corruption of whortleberry. Whortleberry is in turn a corruption
of myrtleberry. In the Middle Ages, the true myrtleberry was
largely used in cookery and medicine, but the European bilberry
or Vaccinium so closely resembled it that the name was
transferred to the latter plant, a circumstance commemorated by
Linnaeus in the giving of the name Vaccinium Myrtillus to the
bilberry. From the European whortleberry the name was transferred
to the similar American plants."
A common little bushy shrub, not a true blueberry, found in moist
woods, especially beside streams, from New England to the Gulf
States, and westward to Ohio, is the BLUE TANGLE, TANGLEBERRY, or
DANGLEBERRY [now TALL HUCKLEBERRY (G. frondosa). It bears a few
tiny greenish-pink flowers dangling from pedicels in loose
racemes, and corresponding clusters of most delicious, sweet,
dark-blue berries, covered with hoary bloom in midsummer.


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