In winter, one of the fruits I find in abundance here in North Florida is sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum), a native cousin of blueberry which contains many of the same health-promoting purple anthocyanin pigments as blueberry. They grow wild here, and I can harvest all I want for free.
Sparkleberries are native all over Southeastern North America. In my area they grow in the sand hills, on deciduous, many-branched shrubs about three to fifteen feet (1-5 meters) tall. Sometimes the plants even grow into small trees. The berries ripen here in November, and often stay on the plants in good edible condition right through the winter into February, even after a hard freeze. The size of the crop varies from year to year, but many times the plants are covered with thousands and thousands of sparkleberries.
Sparkleberry fruits are smaller than most blueberries, about a half-centimeter in diameter, they’re dark purplish-black, and they have a much drier flesh than their cultivated blueberry cousin. I enjoy eating them out of hand, but I’m a pretty hardcore fruit geek, and not everyone likes them that way as much as I do. I find it’s important to adjust your expectations when you try sparkleberry for the first time: if you’re expecting something that tastes like blueberry, you might initially find the sparkleberry experience kind of disappointing. Even for me, when I first started eating sparkleberries it took me a little while to warm up to eating them out of hand, but I find the the more I eat them, the more the flavor grows on me. They’ve got their own pleasant flavor and texture, a bit mild and subtle to be sure, but a nice, distinctive fruity experience. You are not eating a blueberry, you are eating a sparkleberry. Now I really enjoy them as a healthy snack.
Just like their cousin blueberries, which are widely touted as a superfood because of their healthful purple anthocyanin pigments, sparkleberries appear to be loaded with antioxidant anthocyanins. One study analyzed the types of anthocyanins in sparkleberry and found them to be “extremely similar” to the types of anthocyanins in blueberries. If anything, sparkleberries might have even higher levels of these healthful purple compounds, judging by their intensely dark purple-black color. Eating lots of sparkleberries turns my tongue purple, a fun sign of high anthocyanin content in a fruit.
There’s a large and growing body of evidence that berries like these are really good things to include regularly in our diet. Scientists are actively investigating anthocyanins and other compounds in blueberries for potential cancer-fighting and anti-inflammatory effects, and there’s at least some evidence for a possible role in fighting dementia in older adults. Also closely related to sparkleberries in the genus Vaccinium are cranberries and billberries, two other fruits actively investigated for their potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory health benefits. With so many potential health benefits, it seems a good idea to include a diversity of different berry species (as well as other fruits and vegetables) in your diet, so for me sparkleberry is one more addition to the fruity antioxidant mix.
The season for sparkleberries around here exactly complements the blueberry season: the main blueberry crop is in late spring to early summer, and sparkleberries are ripe and available from late fall into winter, so they’re a way to get the antioxidant power of fresh blueberries in your diet when cultivated blueberries are out of season.
Since many people don’t immediately take to the flavor of sparkleberries eaten out of hand, probably the way these berries can find more widespread appeal is as in ingredient in dishes, where they can add an antioxidant punch to all sorts of foods. They’re good in smoothies, which might be the best way to introduce them to people. I wonder if they could be dried and ground into a shelf-stable powder for adding to smoothies, similarly to how people process and use acai powder.
I’ve also found them good in fruit salads, and on chilly winter mornings when I start my day with a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal, I throw in a generous handful of sparkleberries to add a powerful antioxidant punch to my breakfast. I’m guessing that sparkleberry pancakes and sparkleberry muffins would be a fun and tasty way to get these berries into one’s diet.
If you want to try sparkleberries, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that if you live in the native range of this fruit in the southeastern US, you can get them for free, foraged from the wild. The bad news is that if you don’t live in that region, or even if you do live here and you want an easier way to get them than having to wild-harvest, you’re out of luck. As far as I can tell, there’s no commercial source for the fruits. If you do want to forage them, check with your local wild-foods experts about location and season (and of course never eat anything from the wild unless you are one-hundred percent certain you have correctly identified it as an edible).
Sparkleberry fruits seem to vary a lot from plant to plant in size, sweetness, and flavor. It would be great if we could find some selections with particularly large, sweet fruit to propagate and grow. If you do try foraging them, keep on the lookout for any superior plants.
The University of Florida has active research underway to find ways to use sparkleberry to improve the cultivated blueberry crop. One research avenue is to hybridize these two species in order to introduce some sparkleberry genes into blueberries. The other exciting project they’re trying is to graft blueberries onto sparklerry roots, to take advantage of sparkleberry’s amazing ability to grow and produce good crops of fruit in sandy soil, with zero care from humans. This method is showing a lot of promise, and it’s something I want to experiment with myself, so I’ll have more to say about it in a future post.
So far, I haven’t had success trying to propagate sparkleberry, either by cuttings or seeds. I’ve tried numerous times, with cuttings in all stages of growth, planting seeds fresh, storing the seeds in the refrigerator for weeks before planting, and still haven’t gotten any takes. Have you successfully started new sparkleberry plants? Please leave a comment and tell me how you did it.
Florida Fruit Geek 
Super cool! Are these in central FL as well? 🙂
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Hi Dianne, thanks for commenting. I checked my reference book Trees of Florida by Gil Nelson, and it says sparkleberry’s range extends as far south as Lee County, which is the Fort Myers area. So the answer is yes!
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I regularly eat them in the Little Big Econ State Forest in Central Florida.
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How long do they keep? The issue I have with blueberries is that by the time they get shipped to Asia, they’re kind of mushy. I prefer them really firm. So I only eat them when I’m in the US… if Sparkleberries keep longer maybe you could breed some of those properties into blueberries!
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Hi Sone, thanks for commenting. Yeah, that’s a very interesting thought. Sparkleberries do last for a long time – they stay on the plant in good edible condition for three months once they’ve ripened. And I’ve had them sitting around for weeks, and they were still mostly good (the occasional berry had an “off” fermented flavor). They’ve got a slightly tougher skin than blueberries, and a much drier flesh, which I think contributes to their long keeping. They’re almost the consistency of a dried fruit already. You’re right, combining those properties with the sweetness and more intense flavor of blueberries could result in a blueberry with MUCH better keeping qualities for shipping. Hmmmm…..
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These grow in north GA where I live. I like it that you are trying to propagate Sparkleberry. I wonder if these get around by way of bird turd? Or some other scarification… I will experiment this year and let you know how things turn out! Thanks for writing about this stuff
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Hi Megan, thanks for commenting. Yep, sparkleberries to me have “bird fruit” written all over them – tiny purple-black berries with tiny seeds, held way up off the ground. The only thing that makes me scratch my head is that none of the birds around here seem to eat them. The berries stay on the plant right through the winter, finally dropping off in March. Curious. If you’re successful in figuring out a way to propagate these, please do let me know the trick!
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Great article. Thanks! I think I have tons of them on my land here in Jasper, FL near the Withlacoochee River.
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Do you know of any blueberry varieties from the university of Florida that ate part sparkleberry? I’m looking for a hybrid that can tolerate less acidic soil. ‘MEADOWLARK’ may be one, but the report is old and from 2014. Thanks!
-Andrew
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I don’t know about the blueberry varieties UF has released. Is sparkleberry tolerant of less acid soil than blueberry? If so, hybrids are one option, grafting is another. I talked to one of the guys working on that at UF, he said they had found a sparkleberry clone that suckers less, so they were working with Agristarts to tissue culture it for grafting blueberries onto.
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Wow! Super grateful to learn about the potential of grafting blueberries onto the sparkleberries!! Thats my favorite piece of info from this article. Thanks!! 🙂
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I’m trying to grow highbush bluberries in amended soil with a 50% shade cloth and misters here in northern New Mexico. I’m trying. to grow Sparkelberries from seed for a grafting rootstock with a higher ph tolerance. Anybody selling Sparkelberry rootstock
Thanks
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I have tons of sparkleberry on my acrege in the sand hills of SC. Since they spread with runners (much like the SC cherry laurel), I have started digging them up and propagating new plants to transplant where I want natural privacy screen. Good to know they are edible and healthy.
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Wish I could post photos of what is growing in my “back yard”. If these sparkleberries grow in November I don’t think it’s them. It’s june and they look like blueberries but shiner.
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I have sparkleberries growing all over my wooded lot. All are very tart except for one bush that has the most wonderfully sweet sparkleberries which I find more favorable than blueberries. Not sure why this one bush tastes so much sweeter than the others.
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Wow! That’s very exciting to hear. Sounds like a very special individual plant that should get propagated. Unfortunately all my attempts to propagate sparkleberry by cuttings have failed, so I can’t give any recommendations on that. But if I ever figure it out, I would love to get a cutting of that plant.
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Hello, we are exploring our acreage in NW Florida and found our lovely sparkle berry bush in the spring. The bell flowers are so pretty. I cannot wait to try the ripe fruit in the fall. Thank you so much for your article.
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It looks like we have two different varieties of sparkleberry. The GREAT tasting variety of the berries have already matured and is very flavorful. In the other variety, the berries are still green. The sweet-tasting variety plant has smaller leaves, while the tart-tasting trees have larger leaves. Also, the plants are visibly different in size, branching, and shape. I Googled to death trying to see if there are different varieties, but found nothing.
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I don’t think there are any existing named varieties of sparkleberry (apart from some clones selected as rootstocks for blueberry). But in a wild population, there can be a lot of variation from one plant/clone to another. You might have found a variety worth propagating and naming.
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We just discovered sparkleberry bushes/trees on our property this weekend while scouting for a home site. One had been knocked over by a dead fall and we decided to cut some walking sticks out of the long straight parts when we discovered the berries and looked it up to find out what it was. Very interesting bark on these guys. When they fruit later in the year we will definitely harvest and let you know what we think.
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Great- the flavor varies a bit from plant to plant. Be sure to sample a few from every sparkleberry bush you can find, to see if some have better flavored fruits than others.
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I have a bunch of these on my 1-acre lot. I thought they were huckleberries. Mine ripen in July and drop pretty fast after they ripen. I was deliberate about picking them daily last year and had some for months in the fridge and they eventually fermented. There are only a few bushes out of the hundreds I have that produce good eating fruit. Most of them go to the deer and birds. I have never tried to propagate any but, it’s good to know that you haven’t had any luck.
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Found a berry plant while hiking in the local forest looking for chanterelles. I had never heard of sparkle berries before coming across your informative article. I had the foresight while in the forest to snap a picture of this find before I moved on. I’m really excited about this discovery but still hesitant too. Thank you for your article.
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Thank you FFG for the info on Sparkleberries. It was a very well written article. I have just under 7 acres south of Tallahassee, and have a number of the trees in the wild areas. I didn’t know what those pretty flowering trees were before reading the article. I’ll have to watch them this winter for berries!
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Loved reading about this plant! Thanks! There is some experimenting going on in San Diego by a CRFG chapter ( California Rare Fruit) so hope there will be something to report.You can check out their Facebook page, I’m sure they will update what happens with their grafting efforts of Sparkleberry and Blueberries. Mark Miner is hoping to use it to improve Blueberry plantings. Personally I am growing Blueberry as a small farmer here and I am interested in this wild relative, Hope to see some progress.
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Are sparkleberries related to farkleberries?
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Are these related to farkleberries?
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I’ve been eating them off and on since the early 60’s. They are everywhere here in the sand hills of South Carolina. I have read that no one has successfully propagated sparkleberries, and I can tell you, they don’t like to be moved. Not even a small one. I don’t think they grow very fast and any fruiting trees might be many years old. I’m no expert, but all the trees of any size on my property, and there are hundreds of them, look like they did when I played on my family’s property as a child. They looked old and gnarly then and they look old and gnarly still. BTW. The first time I ever bit into a Kiwi Fruit, it immediately occurred to me that it tastes like Sparkle Berrys. This might help encourage some of your readers who enjoy kiwi to try them.
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Thank you for that tip! I love kiwi so….I am going to try them. They’re everywhere- so of course I want to like them. Also- I have noticed the same thing about any attempt to move a tree/bush of these or any sort of noticeable growth….it seems like all of the ones I’ve walked by a million times (on family’s farm) for 30+ years have not gotten taller/larger in any noticeable way. Hmm.
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I have wondered for years what these little things are -growing wild and strong drought, flood or hurricane in MiddleGA. Thank you for this great/useful info!!
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Are sparkleberries related to farkleberries?
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I have a bunch of these on my 1-acre lot. I thought they were huckleberries. Mine ripen in July and drop pretty fast after they ripen. I was deliberate about picking them daily last year and had some for months in the fridge and they eventually fermented. There are only a few bushes out of the hundreds I have that produce good eating fruit. Most of them go to the deer and birds. I have never tried to propagate any but, it’s good to know that you haven’t had any luck.
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I have 2 types of ‘wild blueberries’ on my property in N. FL. The ones you describe which ripen in Fall & Winter and other smaller bushier ones that ripen in June/July. Besides begin bushier & not as tall as the ones that ripen later, the leaves differ in that the undersides have a whitish hue, almost silvery. Are these also sparkleberries?
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