Huckleberry areas...best time etc (Pendleton, Rogue River: campground, living, moving to)

[Hunter Wold]

without giving away your secret spots, just looking for some general areas and time of year i.e. Aug? to get these.
Lived in Idaho and had some great spots and really big berries, know moving to Oregon and looking for the berries.

Thanks,

HW

[bluebird39]

OMG! I love huckleberries. I used to live in Southern Oregon, and one of my favorite areas was on the Rogue River National Forest, just East of Prospect. There's a ranger station there. You can ask there, plus there's "Becky's Cafe" if you strike out and don't find any. They sell great huckleberry pie during the season. Shoot. I've been known to only make it as far as Becky's.....

But there was a fantastic campground between Prospect and Crater Lake NP that was literally surrounded by huckleberry bushes. Although they were usually picked bare.

I'm in Pendleton now, and need to find a good spot. Huckleberry-lemon bread is such an amazing treat!

[Brenda-by-the-sea]

"Huckleberry" is a somewhat generic term used to describe different species of blueberry-type plants within the genus Vaccinium. What inlanders call a "huckleberry" will be different from what someone living closer to the coast calls a "huckleberry."

In Idaho, the term 'huckleberry' generally refers to Vaccinium membranaeceum, which is a deciduous plant that bears fruit in summer. It produces bigger fruit than other species. On the Oregon coast where I am, folks pick the small-fruited Vaccinium ovatum, which is evergreen and typically bears from September to late November. Elsewhere in the PNW, folks pick the red huckleberry, Vaccinium parvifolium, which is another deciduous one. It is more acidic and not as good for fresh eating though it makes good jam and pies.