Vaccinium tenellum |
Vaccinium oxycoccos |
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small black blueberry, southern blueberry |
bog cranberry, canneberge commune, small cranberry, swamp cranberry, wild cranberry |
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Habit | Plants forming extensive, open colonies, 1–7.5 dm; twigs yellowish green, ± terete, hairy. | Plants trailing, shoots 0.1–0.3(–0.5) dm. |
Leaves | deciduous, rarely persistent; blade green, spatulate to elliptic, 13–40 × 3–17 mm, subcoriaceous, margins sharply to obscurely serrate, surfaces glandular abaxially, hairy especially when young, rarely glabrous. |
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 pale green, sometimes hairy; corolla usually white tinged with pink, cylindric, 5–9 mm; filaments ± hairy. |
calyx lobes relatively small; corolla strongly reflexed at anthesis, white to deep pink; filaments hairy; anther tubules 2–2.5 mm. |
Berries | black, 6–8 mm diam., sometimes puberulent. |
deep red, red-spotted at first, 6–12 mm diam., smooth. |
Seeds | 5–25, ca. 1 mm. |
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2n | = 24. |
= 24, 48, 72. |
Vaccinium tenellum |
Vaccinium oxycoccos |
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Phenology | Flowering winter–spring. | Flowering early summer. |
Habitat | Dry sand hills, pine barrens, scrubby oak woods, open pine parkland, and flatwoods subject to burning | Half buried in Sphagnum hummocks in bogs, fens, muskeg, arctic-alpine tundra |
Elevation | 0-200 m (0-700 ft) | 0-1500 m (0-4900 ft) |
Distribution |
AL; FL; GA; MS; NC; SC; VA
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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 | Cyanococcus tenellus | 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 | Aiton: Hort. Kew. 2: 12. 1789 , | Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 1: 351. 1753 , |
Web links |
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