Wednesday Overnight Open Thread - November 26, 2025 [Zombie Rex]

Good evening Horde. The time has come for mid-week shenanigans of the overnight variety.

Welcome to the Wednesday night ONT which means another edition of overnight fun and games. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. Good will offerings of amusing puns are happily accepted. Be nice to your fellow commenters and AoS contributors. No, this is not an officially recognized Food Thread. Don't be a traffic cone.

"Hey Willie! Time for the Wednesday night ONT. You read while I go find the cat..."

I know what you're thinking. Turkey, turkey, turkey. Everyone talks about Thanksgiving in terms of turkey. Turkey on the table, turkey pardons, turkeys falling from the sky, etc.

What about the cranberry? When does the small but mighty cranberry get its turn in the spotlight?

I'm glad you asked...

"Vaccinium macrocarpon" is the botanical name for the American cranberry.

Vaccinium macrocarpon, commonly called American cranberry, is native to bogs, swamps, and wet shorelines in parts of northern and eastern North America. It is a low-growing vine or trailing shrub (to 6" tall and spreading) with small, glossy leaves. Small, nodding flowers with white to pink, recurved petals bloom from late spring into early summer. The flowers are followed by plump, red to dark purple, ovoid to round, 0.5" diameter fruits. The leaves of this plant are a larval food source for the bog copper butterfly, the flowers are visited by bees, and the fruits are eaten by birds and occasionally small mammals.

The genus name Vaccinium comes from an ancient Latin name apparently derived from a prehistoric Mediterranean language. Its origin and meaning are generally considered to be lost to time.

The specific epithet macrocarpon means large-fruited, in reference to the relatively large size of the fruit of this species.

The common name cranberry derives from the Germanic kraan, meaning "crane" and bere, meaning "berry," possibly in reference to the appearance of the flowers.

Source: Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO

Commercial cranberry cultivation reportedly started in the United States in 1816. Captain Henry Hall found a cranberry vine thriving in some sand on Cape Cod (Dennis, Massachusetts). He became the first person to successfully cultivate cranberries.

He noticed that the wild cranberries in his bogs grew better when sand blew over them. Captain Hall began transplanting cranberry vines and spreading sand on them. Others quickly copied his technique.

The idea of growing and selling cranberries commercially caught on. Local landowners converted their swamps, wetlands, peat swamps and wet meadows into cranberry bogs.

By 1885, Plymouth County had 1,347 acres under cultivation. Barnstable County had 2,408 acres. By 1900, the number of acres tripled, making Cape Cod a household name for cranberries.

What came next? Naturally, cranberries in a can.

In 1912, a lawyer named Marcus Urann bought a cranberry bog. Based at a facility in Hanson, Massachusetts, he sought ways to extend the short selling season of the berries. Canning them made cranberries a year-round product. He and two others eventually formed a cranberry cooperative.

Cranberry Juice Cocktail was introduced in 1933 and the jellied cranberry sauce became available nationwide in 1941. Yes, the technical term for the tube of jiggling cranberry in a can is "sauce."

The cranberry cooperative group added members from Wisconsin, Oregon, and Washington, and became the National Cranberry Association in 1946. In 1957, it became Ocean Spray after acquiring the name and logo from a fish company in Washington. You might have heard of it. It remains a cooperative, with over 700 farmers.

An exemption for agricultural cooperatives in the Capper-Volstead Act of 1922 gave "associations" making agricultural products limited exemptions from anti-trust laws.

[Source: assorted nuggets from across the interweb]

Cran facts:

Americans consume 5,062,500 gallons of jellied cranberry sauce. It takes four million pounds of cranberries - 200 berries in each can.

Only about five percent of America's total cranberry crop is sold as fresh fruit. The rest go into juice, jelly, sauce, and dried fruit (craisins).

The five states known for growing cranberries are: Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. Wisconsin alone accounts for over 50%.

It takes approximately 4,400 cranberries to produce one gallon of cranberry juice.

Cranberry vines are evergreen perennials that can live for over 100 years and produce fruit for up to 65 years in commercial cultivation.

Do cranberries grow in water? No! Bogs are flooded just before the harvest. The vines are gently jiggled. The berries are released and float to the surface where they are scooped up. They can be dry picked (think of a process that runs a comb through the vines), but about 90 percent of cranberries are picked using wet harvesting techniques.

Four little air pockets inside each berry allows them to float.

More knowledge here:

Thinking of becoming a cranberry farmer? This is good story telling and a very well made film.

The Pittsburgh police scanner keeps giving. Thank you people of Pittsburgh!

Tracked to the FBI building? Hmmm...

Friendship seems...unfriendly.

Which one of you was this?

For the big ONT finish. What else could it be?

Written correspondence can be sent to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. If you came to the ONT to find cheat codes to Hunt the Wumpus, you are welcome to look through our old Compute! magazines. They're over in the corner and bundled with twine. Are you lurking ?? Thank you for your attention to this matter.

posted by Open Blogger at 10:00 PM

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