Autumn berry season in Finland: what ripens after bilberry, and when

By the middle of August the bilberry patches start to thin out. The berries left are softer, the leaves are starting to turn, and the people who were bent over the moss three weeks ago have gone home to their freezers. If you missed the peak, we wrote about the bilberry season here, and shaded slopes still hold fruit for another week or two.

But the forest is not finished. Now the colour changes. The blue goes, and red and orange come in — lingonberry on the dry heath, sea buckthorn on the coast, aronia in the hedges, cranberry out on the bogs. Autumn is a longer and more forgiving season than bilberry ever was.

The calendar, roughly

Here is the shape of it in southern Finland in a normal year. Lingonberry starts turning red in late August and is at its peak through September, with berries still on the plants into October. Sea buckthorn ripens in September — garden varieties often from late August — and hangs on the bushes into winter.

Aronia is ready in September, once the fruit has gone fully black. Cranberry begins in the second half of September, runs through October, and then does something the others do not: it overwinters under the snow and can be picked again in spring.

All of that is typical rather than fixed. A cold or wet summer pushes every date back, sometimes by a fortnight, and can leave lingonberry still pale into mid-September in the south. A hot, dry summer pulls everything forward and can leave the berries small. Lapland runs two to three weeks behind the south, so a September date near Helsinki is an October date near Rovaniemi.

The plants are the reliable source: walk out, turn a few berries over, and see whether the colour goes all the way round.

The window is wider than bilberry’s six weeks. Between them, lingonberry, cranberry and sea buckthorn cover September, October and often part of November, and cranberry offers a second go in spring. If you are late for one, you are usually early for the next.

Lingonberry — puolukka

Vaccinium vitis-idaea is the workhorse of the Finnish autumn. It grows in the same pine and spruce forests as bilberry, often within a few metres of it, but on the drier ground. Look on sunny heath under mature pines, at forest edges, and in old clearings where the light gets in. If the ground is dry underfoot and the moss is thin, look down.

The berries are ripe when they are red all the way round. A lingonberry with a white or pink shoulder is not ready. Left on the plant, the fruit deepens over September, and a light frost takes some of the sharpness out of it. Some pickers deliberately wait for the first cold night, though frost-softened berries are harder to clean and do not keep as long, so pick before the frosts if you want them to store.

Pick by hand or with the same scoop-style picker you use for bilberry, and comb gently. Lingonberry is a low evergreen that grows very slowly, and the same plants will be there next year if you leave them intact. We have a longer explainer on what a lingonberry actually is if you want the background.

Once home, the berries keep for weeks in a cool cellar or the fridge. Lingonberries contain naturally occurring benzoic acid, a preservative, which is why they were once kept in barrels of water through the winter.

Sea buckthorn — tyrni

Hippophaë rhamnoides is a coastal plant in Finland. Wild bushes grow along the Gulf of Bothnia and the south-west coast, through the archipelago and across Åland, mostly on sandy or stony shores. It is also widely planted in gardens, and much of what people pick comes from planted bushes.

The berries turn orange from late August and stay on the branches long after the leaves have gone, sometimes right through midwinter. The taste is sharp and citrusy, with an oily quality behind it that surprises people expecting something like an orange.

Now the honest part: sea buckthorn is difficult to pick. The branches are thorny, the berries sit tight against the wood, and they burst the moment you squeeze them. You end up with juice on your hands and half a berry left on the twig.

Many people wait for a proper frost, when the fruit comes away more easily. Others cut a branch from a bush in their own garden, freeze it, and shake the frozen berries off. That is fast and clean, and it is only acceptable on your own plants.

Everyman’s right lets you pick berries from wild sea buckthorn. It does not let you cut branches. Cutting damages the plant, and on someone else’s land it is not allowed. Some coastal nature reserves have their own restrictions, so check before you go.

Aronia — marja-aronia

Aronia is the odd one out of the four. Aronia melanocarpa and the cultivated hybrid Aronia mitschurinii — the one actually grown in most Finnish hedges and on most Finnish farms — are not forest berries. They are garden and farm shrubs, planted as hedges and grown in rows. If you see aronia in Finland, it is almost certainly in someone’s yard or on a farm.

The fruit is ripe from late August into September, when it has gone fully black-purple and gives slightly under a finger. Raw, it is dry and strongly astringent in a way that puts many people off at first. A frost softens that noticeably, and it behaves much better cooked or juiced than eaten off the bush. We wrote about aronia at length here.

Everyman’s right does not cover garden or farm plants. Berries in someone’s hedge belong to them. If you want some, ask, or find a farm that lets you pick.

Cranberry — karpalo

Vaccinium oxycoccos grows on open bogs and in wet sphagnum, on thread-thin creeping stems that lie across the surface of the moss. The berries are pea-sized and often half sunk into the moss, so you find them more with your fingers than your eyes. Wear boots — the ground that holds cranberries is the ground that holds water. This is the small Nordic cranberry, not the large farmed American one, and we have written about the difference.

The first pick is from the second half of September into October, and frost sweetens the berries as it does lingonberry. Then the snow comes and the berries stay where they are, under it, all winter.

After snowmelt in spring — usually April or May, depending on the year and how far north you are — the overwintered berries can be picked again. Many people prefer this kevätkarpalo: softer, darker and less sharp than the autumn fruit.

Some of the richest bogs are inside nature reserves. Boardwalk areas sometimes forbid leaving the path or picking at all, and those rules override everyman’s right. Look for the signs at the car park before you look for berries.

Storing what you bring home

Lingonberry is the easy one. It keeps for weeks somewhere cool and it freezes as cleanly as bilberry. Cranberry freezes well too, and both come out of the bag as separate berries rather than a block.

The freezer method is the same as for bilberry. Do not wash first. Spread the berries loose on a tray until firm, then bag them, press the air out and write the date on.

Sea buckthorn is the awkward one again. It does not keep fresh for long off the branch, so it goes into the freezer whole or through the juicer the same day. Aronia is usually cooked, juiced or frozen rather than stored fresh.

Two honest limitations, and they are the same every year. Frozen berries thaw soft, so they belong in porridge, baking and sauces rather than on top of a dessert. And an autumn haul lands on shelves you already filled with bilberry, which is why so many Finnish households end up owning a second freezer.

After the season

Taking the water out is the other way to keep a harvest, and it is the old one — a warm stove and patience, long before anyone owned a freezer. Ours are air-dried at low temperature and milled into powder. Lingonberry, sea buckthorn and cranberry come from wild-foraged Finnish berries, and aronia from farmed bushes. One ingredient in each. Nothing added.

It is no substitute for a September morning on the heath. But it does mean the berries you could not fit in the freezer are still around in March.

The colours are changing in the forest right now. Go and see.

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