With apologies to the Bard, that which we call a Saskatoon berry, by any other name, would taste as sweet, but the name is and should be, Saskatoon berry and nothing else.
These are sweet purple berries that grow on the Canadian prairies. While they have been gathered from wild bushes for centuries by natives, explorers, homesteaders and now residents, there is a small but growing commercial business in the fruit. It looks like a large blueberry but is more nutritious.
A native North American plant, it has a fairly wide range across western Canada extending slightly into the northern US west and coastal states.
The berries get there name from the original aboriginal word “mi-sask-wat-o-min” singular or plural “misaskwatomina”
US researchers at Cornell University found that Americans loved the taste of the berries, but had trouble with the name. US marketers then suggested that Canadians seeking to sell the fruit in the US, change the labels to read “juneberries”
Many Canadians were somewhat miffed when they heard this, but Sandra Purdy, president of the Saskatoon Berry Council of Canada says the name change request was from a distributor who said Americans in some regions were “more familiar with juneberries, so can you put that on the label,” Purdy says she has changed the labels to include the word “juneberries” with her own products, “ but it’s in much smaller print beneath the word ‘Saskatoon berry.'”
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