black huckleberry

Photo: Steven G. Johnson — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 7

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Blueberry sweet; lingonberry/cranberry tart (cook); bilberry intense but tiny.

Hardiness

Zone 3–7

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

July–Sept

Mature size

Deciduous shrub 0.3–1.5 m, colonial by rhizome; foliage sticky with resin dots

Light

Partial to full sun

Soil pH

4.0–5.5 — ⚠ STRICTLY ACID-LOVING (calcifuge). Will die on alkaline soil; use ericaceous compost + rainwater

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Eastern North America — eastern Canada and the Great Lakes south through the Appalachians to Georgia, west into the Midwest; dry acid woods, rocky slopes and clearings.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

5–15 cm/year — slow, taking several seasons to make a patch.

Spacing

120 cm (47 in) apart — about 1.4 m² (16 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, small, oval and glossy, up to about 5 cm long, and — the diagnostic character for the genus — dotted on both faces with sessile resin glands that shed a sticky gum.

Root system

Shallow and strongly rhizomatous, spreading underground to form patches and knitting the surface well enough to hold thin soil on slopes.

Fruit description

Round black berries about 8 mm across, shining and without bloom, sweet and slightly resinous; each contains 10 hard nutlets rather than the many soft seeds of a blueberry, which is the crunch people notice.

Propagation

Division of rooted rhizome pieces is much the easiest and most reliable route. Seed is short-lived, slow and awkward, needing moist cold stratification and still germinating erratically; softwood cuttings taken in the growing season are an intermediate option.

Pollination

Self-fertile, so one bush will crop, but fruit set is distinctly better with a second plant nearby. Pollinated mainly by bees working the small urn-shaped flowers, with occasional flies and butterflies.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.