Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect VisitorsBlanchan, Neltje
Science
Wild Flowers: An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors
Blanchan, Neltje
Wild flowers -- North America
To a genus quite distinct from the huckleberries belong the true
blueberries, however interchangeably these names are misused.
Perhaps the first species to send its fruit to market in June and
July is the DWARF, SUGAR, or LOW-BUSH BLUEBERRY (Vaccinium
Pennsylvanicum), sometimes six inches tall, never more than
twenty inches. It prefers sandy or rocky soil from southern New
Jersey far northward, and west to Illinois. Shortly after the
small, bell-shaped, white or pink flowers, that grow in racemes
on the ends or sides of the angular, green, warty branches of
nearly all blueberry bushes, have been fertilized by bees, this
species forms an especially sweet berry with a bloom on its blue
surface. The alternate oblong leaves, smooth and green on both
sides, are very finely and sharply saw-edged.
Another, and perhaps the commonest, as it is the finest, species,
whose immature fruit is still green or red when the dwarf's is
ripe, is the HIGH-BUSH, TALL, or SWAMP BLUEBERRY (V. corymbosum),
found in low wet ground from Virginia westward to the
Mississippi, and very far north. Only the bees and their kind
concern themselves with the little cylindric, five-parted,
nectar-bearing flowers. These appear with the oblong, entire
leaves, paler below than above. But thousands of fruit sellers
and housekeepers depend on the sweet blueberries (with a pleasant
acid flavor) as a market staple. In July and August, even in
early September, the berries arrive in the cities. One picker in
New Jersey claims to have filled an entire crate with the fruit
of a single bush.
The DEERBERRY, BUCKBERRY, or SQUAW HUCKLEBERRY (V. stainineum),
common in dry woods and thickets from Maine and Minnesota to the
Gulf States, puts forth quantities of small greenish-white,
yellow, or purplish-green, open bell-shaped, five-cleft flowers,
nodding from hair-like pedicels in graceful, leafy-bracted
racemes. Both the tips of the stamens and the style protrude like
a fringe. No creature, unless hard pressed by hunger, could
relish the greenish or yellowish berries. This is a low-growing,
spreading shrub, with firm oval or oblong tapering leaves, dull
above, and pale, sometimes even hoary, underneath.
CREEPING SNOWBERRY
(Chiogenes hispidula) Huckleberry family
Flowers - Very small, white, few, solitary, nodding on short,
curved peduncles from the leaf axils. Calyx 2-bracted, 4-cleft;
corolla a short 4-cleft bell; 8 short stamens, each anther sac
opening by a slit to the middle; 1 pistil, the ovary 4-celled.
Stem: Creeping along the ground, the slender, leafy, hairy
branches 3 to 12 in. long. Leaves: Evergreen, alternate,
2-ranked, oval, very small, dark and glossy above, coated with
stiff, rusty hairs underneath, the edges curled. Fruit: A
snow-white, round or oval, mealy, aromatic berry; ripe
August-September.
Preferred Habitat - Cool bogs; low, moist, mossy woods.
Flowering Season - May-June.
Distribution - North Carolina and Michigan northward to the
British Possessions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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