Smallflower blueberry

Photo: Jerry A. Payne, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Bugwood.org — CC BY 3.0 us · 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.

The most compact Vaccinium in this catalog. Small, shiny black berries, juicy but plain — edible rather than delicious, smaller than a typical commercial blueberry.

Hardiness

Zone 7–9

Habit

Groundcover

Edible part

Fruit

Ripens

June–July

Mature size

Creeping, prostrate and spreading, to about 0.3 m (1 ft)

Light

Full sun for best fruiting, tolerates light shade

Soil pH

4.5–5.5 (strongly to mildly acid) — lime-free

Environment

Subtropical, coastal plain

Native range

Southeastern United States — southern Virginia through the Carolinas, sparingly south to Florida and west to Mississippi; dry woodland borders, thin woods and pine barrens.

Status

Wild

Years to fruit

2–3 yrs

Growth speed

Slow

Spacing

60 cm (24 in) apart — about 2.8 per m² (2.6 per 10 sq ft)

Leaf shape

Small deciduous leaves 1–3 cm long, narrowly obovate to elliptic, finely toothed toward the tip and slightly hairy beneath.

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

Small, shiny black, 6–8 mm, juicy but plain

Propagation

Seed (sown late winter in acid mix, 3 months cold stratification if stored), half-ripe cuttings in August, layering in late summer/early autumn (about 18 months to establish), or division of suckers.

Pollination

Insect-pollinated.

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.