Evergreen blueberry

Photo: Bob Peterson from North Palm Beach, Florida, Planet Earth! — CC BY-SA 2.0 · source

Survives zone 7 through 9

Harvest calendar

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

Also called shiny blueberry — a low, sand-loving evergreen of Deep South scrub, sandhills and pine flatwoods. Juicy, fair-quality black berries, smaller (about 6 mm) than most cultivated blueberries.

Hardiness

Zone 7–9

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

Late spring–summer

Mature size

Low evergreen shrub, 0.5 m tall by 1 m wide (1.5 x 3 ft)

Light

Full sun to part shade

Soil pH

4.0–5.5 (strongly acid)

Environment

Subtropical, coastal plain

Native range

Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina — mesic pine flatwoods, sandhills, scrubby flatwoods, dry prairies and scrub.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Slow

Spacing

90 cm (35 in) apart — about 1.2 per m² (1.1 per 10 sq ft)

Leaf shape

Small, evergreen, alternate, elliptic to obovate, 0.5–1.5 cm long, leathery and often glaucous blue-green with finely toothed margins.

Root system

Shallow fibrous roots in the top 20–30 cm with few or no root hairs, relying on ericoid mycorrhizal fungi for uptake, spreading into colonies by underground rhizome. The clump you see is usually one plant. Keep it mulched and undisturbed; the rhizomes sit too shallow to survive digging around them.

Fruit description

Black, about 6 mm, juicy, fair quality

Propagation

Rhizome division in spring is the reliable route; semi-ripe summer cuttings root in an ericaceous mix with bottom heat. Seed is slow and variable.

Pollination

The flowers hold their pollen in tubes that open by pores at the tip, so it is shaken out by bees that vibrate the anthers — bumblebees and solitary bees do this, honeybees largely cannot. Not measured for this species; treat it as the genus norm of partial self-incompatibility and plant more than one clone for a crop.

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.