This is the state fruit of Massachusetts and Wisconsin.

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The Cranberry is native to southern Quebec & Ontario, to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, ranging all through New England, New York, New Jersey & Delaware, areas of coastal Maryland, Virginia, & North Carolina, spots in the Appalachians from northern Georgia to most of Pennsylvania, northern Ohio & Indiana, most of Michigan, northeast Illinois along Lake Michigan, most of Wisconsin, and central & northern Minnesota in bogs, marshes, swamps, along watercourses, and near lakes in acid, sandy and/or well-decomposed organic soils. I've never seen it sold in conventional nurseries. There are a number of mail order and native plant nurseries that sell small plants and seeds. There are a number of plant species that grow wild only in special habitats of very acid and draining wet soils (like Chokeberry shrubs) that can adapt well to typical landscapes and gardens that have the common silty and/or clay, neutral soils when planted there. I did not think that Cranberry was one of them and could adapt to a regular garden or landscape; however, I bought one plant at a native plant nursery that had a Steeplebush Spirea growing along with the Cranberry in the pot. I really bought the pot for the Steeplebush. Both plants have been doing fine in a silty, mesic soil with a pH about 6.7. I made a slight depression in the ground to help hold more water and I do water them whenever I can. Of course, Cranberry does better in a bog garden with more moisture and more acid soil. Cranberry forms a prostrate mat by extensive, horizontal, reddish-brown stolons.

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This is the commercial cranberry that also grows wild in sunny sphagnum bogs from Canada to North Carolina. Although rare in the wild and grown carefully for commercial production, the American Cranberry is not difficult to grow. The soil must be highly organic and kept cool and moist. Plants like full to mostly sunny locations. Cranberry plants grow 2 to 6 inches tall and indefinitely wide, forming large mats by means of trailing branches that take root intermittently. The evergreen leaves are elliptical and 3/4 inches long, becoming reddish in the winter and with new growth. The flowers are not showy and look like little pink bells. American Cranberry makes a good, thick ground cover where conditions are right. The texture is low and dense.

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