Hairy huckleberry

Photo: Alex Abair — CC BY 4.0 · source

Survives zone 8 through 9

Harvest calendar

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

A coastal-plain huckleberry of the southeastern US, found in moist pine flatwoods, savannas and blackwater floodplain margins. Dark blue or occasionally white fruit, sweet and juicy, good in jams and pies.

Hardiness

Zone 8–9

Habit

Shrub

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Summer

Mature size

To about 2.1 m (7 ft)

Light

Full sun to part shade

Soil pH

4.5–6.0 (strongly to mildly acid)

Environment

Subtropical, coastal plain

Native range

Southeastern US coastal plain — Alabama, Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas, from central peninsular Florida north to central Georgia and southern South Carolina, west to southwestern Alabama.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

3–4 yrs

Growth speed

10–20 cm/year — slow to medium.

Spacing

150 cm (59 in) apart — about 2.3 m² (24 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, oval and firm, conspicuously downy beneath with hairs about 0.5 mm long, and downy on the twigs too — the felting that gives the plant its name — with the genus's resin dots underneath.

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 berries about 8–10 mm across, ripening dark blue (occasionally white), sweet and juicy, each holding the genus's 10 hard nutlets rather than a blueberry's soft seed.

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

Insect-pollinated, chiefly by bumblebees working the small urn-shaped flowers; largely self-fertile, though a second plant improves set.

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.