Cloudberry
Rubus chamaemorus
Raised sphagnum bog and blanket mire in the north. Not a woodland plant: it wants open moss with water beneath it. In Britain it is confined to the Pennines, the Southern Uplands and the Highlands, and it flowers far more often than it fruits — plants are male or female, and a whole colony can be one or the other.
The season is a matter of days: over-ripe fruit falls apart at a touch. Red fruit is unripe and stays firm; ripe fruit is orange-amber and soft enough to bruise in the hand.
Where people are picking now
the best place in the region — not an average over the region. Regions are ranked by today's number.
The fraction beside the stage says how many measurement points out of how many the region was computed from. “1/22” means the weather history was long enough at one place out of twenty-two: the number describes that place, not the whole region.
- Trentino-Alto Adigeripe100
- Abruzzodropping0
- Apuliadropping0
- Basilicatadropping0
- Calabriadropping0
- Campaniadropping0
- Emilia-Romagnadropping0
- Friuli-Venezia Giuliadropping0
- Goriškadropping2/40
- Laziodropping0
- Liguriadropping0
- Lombardiadropping10/470
The forecast is computed for 23 regions out of 583. The rest are not listed — that is "not computed", not "no berries".
Map
The field is built from a network of measurement points, the way a meteorologist draws a rainfall map from a network of stations: the value is computed at each point and interpolated between them. A cell is about 250 km² across, which is the resolution our weather data comes at, and we do not draw it finer: that would be invented precision. Only the “how much” goes into the colour, not the stage: “a little, ripe” and “plenty, still green” look the same on the map — read the stage on the card. Blank cells are where the season history was too short to compute, not where the berry is absent.
All berries, compared for today
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