Vaccinium boreale |
Vaccinium oxycoccos |
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bleuet boréal, northern blueberry, sweet hurts |
bog cranberry, canneberge commune, small cranberry, swamp cranberry, wild cranberry |
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Habit | Plants forming small, dense colonies, 0.1–0.9 dm, (superficially rhizomatous); twigs green, (delicate), angled, (intricately branched), hairy in lines. | Plants trailing, shoots 0.1–0.3(–0.5) dm. |
Leaves | deciduous; blade bright green, narrowly elliptic, 8–21 × 2–6 mm, membranous, margins sharply, uniformly serrate, surfaces usually glabrous, eglandular abaxially. |
blades glaucous abaxially, green adaxially, ovate, sometimes elliptic, 3–10 × 1–5 mm, coriaceous, margins entire, strongly revolute. |
Inflorescences | in axils of leaflike bracts at base of previous year’s or older shoots, (leafy portion often failing to elongate). |
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Pedicels | nodding, slender, 2–3 cm, bracteolate or not; bracteoles 1–5, reddish, scalelike, to 1 mm wide. |
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Flowers | calyx green, glaucous, glabrous (sometimes ciliate); corolla white to greenish white, cylindric, 3–4 mm; filaments ciliate. |
calyx lobes relatively small; corolla strongly reflexed at anthesis, white to deep pink; filaments hairy; anther tubules 2–2.5 mm. |
Berries | blue, glaucous, 3–5 mm diam., glabrous. |
deep red, red-spotted at first, 6–12 mm diam., smooth. |
Seeds | 10–30, ca. 1.1 mm. |
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2n | = 24. |
= 24, 48, 72. |
Vaccinium boreale |
Vaccinium oxycoccos |
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Phenology | Flowering late spring–early summer. | Flowering early summer. |
Habitat | Headlands, open, rocky uplands, alpine heaths and meadows, forest-tundra. 0-2000 m | Half buried in Sphagnum hummocks in bogs, fens, muskeg, arctic-alpine tundra |
Elevation | 0-1500 m (0-4900 ft) | |
Distribution |
ME; NH; NY; VT; NB; NL; NS; QC
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AK; CA; CT; ID; IL; IN; MA; MD; ME; MI; MN; NH; NJ; NY; OH; OR; PA; RI; VT; WA; WI; WV; AB; BC; MB; NB; NL; NS; NT; NU; ON; PE; QC; SK; YT; SPM; Greenland; n Europe; n Asia
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Discussion | Vaccinium oxycoccos is interruptedly circumboreal (absent from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, including Baffin Island) extending southward in North America to California in the Cascade Range and to West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains. In Europe, some chromosome races of Vaccinium oxycoccos have been given specific rank (S. P. Vander Kloet 1983) at one time or another; unfortunately, hexaploids cannot be differentiated consistently from diploids or tetraploids using morphological features such as leaf indumentum or bract size. On most vines, especially north of 50° north latitude, the leafy portion of the fertile shoot fails to develop, giving the illusion that Vaccinium oxycoccos has an inflorescence comprising a short rachis bearing flowers on a slender pedicel. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Source | FNA vol. 8, p. 528. | FNA vol. 8, p. 519. |
Parent taxa | Ericaceae > subfam. Vaccinioideae > Vaccinium > sect. Cyanococcus | Ericaceae > subfam. Vaccinioideae > Vaccinium > sect. Oxycoccus |
Sibling taxa | ||
Synonyms | Oxycoccus hagerupii, Oxycoccus intermedius, Oxycoccus microcarpus, Oxycoccus ovalifolius, Oxycoccus oxycoccos, Oxycoccus palustris, Oxycoccus palustris var. intermedius, Oxycoccus palustris subsp. microphyllus, Oxycoccus palustris var. ovalifolius, Oxycoccus quadripetalus, Oxycoccus quadripetalus var. microphyllus, V. microcarpum, V. oxycoccos var. intermedium, V. oxycoccos subsp. microphyllum, V. oxycoccos var. microphyllum, V. oxycoccos var. ovalifolium | |
Name authority | I. V. Hall & Aalders: Amer. J. Bot. 48: 200. 1961 , | Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 1: 351. 1753 , |
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