Vaccinium uliginosum

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Vaccinium uliginosum

Leaves and fruit

Kingdom:	Plantae
Division:	Magnoliophyta
Class:	Magnoliopsida
Order:	Ericales
Family:	Ericaceae
Genus:	Vaccinium
Species:	V. uliginosum

Binomial name

Vaccinium uliginosum
L.

Vaccinium uliginosum (Bog Bilberry or Northern Bilberry) is a flowering plant in the genus Vaccinium.

Flowers

It is native to cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, at low altitudes in the Arctic, and at high altitudes south to the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Caucasus in Europe, the mountains of Mongolia, northern China and central Japan in Asia, and the Sierra Nevada in California and the Rocky Mountains in Utah in North America. It grows on wet acidic soils on heathland, moorland, tundra, and in the understory of coniferous forests, from sea level in the Arctic, up to 3,400 m altitude in the south of the range.

It is a small deciduous shrub growing to 10-75 cm tall, rarely 1 m tall, with brown stems (unlike the green stems of the closely related Bilberry). The leaves are oval, 4-30 mm long and 2-15 mm wide, blue-green with pale net-like veins, with a smooth margin and rounded apex. The flowers are pendulous, urn-shaped, pale pink, 4-6 mm long, produced in mid spring. The fruit is a dark blue-black berry 5-8 mm diameter, with a white flesh, edible and sweet when ripe in late summer.

Some authors separate Arctic plants as V. uliginosum subsp. microphyllum Lange, and North American plants as V. uliginosum subsp. occidentale (A.Gray) Hultén, but these are not considered distinct by all authorities.