ALASKA. Abundant rain in July makes for full buckets in August and September

The rains that torment Anchorage residents through the month of July can have had a berry, berry silver lining.

All over the Chugach and Kenai mountains, hikers, climbers, hunters and, yes, even berry pickers have been reporting all that moisture bore fruit.

Lingonberry, lowbush cranberry
Lingonberry, lowbush cranberry
Featured

Lingonberry, lowbush cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea)

General
An evergreen ground cover.
Ecology
Grows in diverse habitats from dry roadside slopes to acid-peat bogs, and from mature spruce-hardwood forests to exposed arctic and alpine tundra. It grows in dense mats, 8 to 12 inches (20–30 cm) tall in deep shady forests but also forms ground-hugging mats scattered among the rocks of exposed alpine outcrops. Fruit is most abundant in exposed sites that have acid soils with a high organic matter content.

Service Berry
Service Berry

Serviceberries Amelanchier

Amelanchier (/æməˈlænʃɪər/ am-ə-LAN-sheer), also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry, or just sarvis, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum, and chuckley pear is a genus of about 20 species of deciduous-leaved shrubs and small trees in the Rose family (Rosaceae).

BlackBerry Empetrum nigrum
BlackBerry Empetrum nigrum

Black crowberry Empetrum nigrum

Empetrum nigrum, Alaskan name blackberry

Empetrum nigrum, crowberry, black crowberry, or, in western Alaska, blackberry, is a flowering plant species in the heather family Ericaceae with a near circumboreal distribution in the northern hemisphere. It is also native in the Falkland Islands. It is usually dioecious, but there is a bisexual tetraploid subspecies, Empetrum nigrum ssp. hermaphroditum, that occurs in more northerly locations and at higher altitude.

Evolutionary biologists have explained the striking geographic distribution of crowberries as a result of long-distance migratory birds dispersing seeds from one pole to the other.

Alaskan Alpine Bearberry

Alaskan Alpine BearberryArctostaphylos alpina, with the common names alpine bearberry, mountain bearberry, or black bearberry is a dwarf shrub in the heather family Ericaceae. The basionym of this species is Arbutus alpina L.

Distribution and habitat
Arctostaphylos alpina is a procumbent shrub usually less than 6 inches (15 cm) high with a woody stem and straggling branches. The leaves are alternate and wither in the autumn but remain on the plant for another year. The leaves are stalked and are oval with serrated margins and a network of veins. They often turn red to scarlet in autumn.