As ornamental as they are productive. The heat-loving rabbiteye and Southern highbush kinds give spring flowers, summer fruit, and fiery fall color; plant more than one for the best crop.
Vaccinium arboreum, the sparkleberry, is the giant of the blueberry clan, a large shrub or small tree native across the southeastern and south-central United States, from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas. The species name arboreum means tree-like, and an old specimen earns it, rising to twenty or twenty-five feet on a gnarled, contorted frame. The folk names sparkleberry and farkleberry both nod to the small, glossy, glinting black fruits, and the plant is sometimes called tree huckleberry or winter huckleberry for the leaves that linger late.
A large evergreen shrub with glossy leaves, reaching six to twelve feet in time and occasionally more, with the leathery, polished foliage that sets the evergreen blueberries apart from their deciduous relatives. New growth flushes bronze to red before hardening to dark green. White urn-shaped flowers hang in short racemes in early summer, each cluster subtended by the leafy bracts that give the species its name, and are followed by small dark berries, edible and mildly sweet. The habit is dense and rounded, useful year-round in a way that a highbush blueberry never manages. Our plants were struck from cuttings taken at the old Woodlanders site, off stock that has been growing here in Aiken for many years.
Hardiness
Zones 7–9
Light
Full Sun / Part Shade
Height
6–12 ft.
Spread
5–8 ft.
Bloom
White
Plant type
Shrub
Traditional use
general wellness, digestive health, topical applications
Creeping blueberry runs flat. Vaccinium crassifolium ‘Bloodstone’ makes a dense evergreen mat five to eight inches deep, the trailing stems rooting and swelling into small woody burls wherever they touch ground, so a single plant knits outward year on year into a carpet. The leaves are thick and leathery and hold a semi-gloss, broader and rounder than the species runs, closer in texture to periwinkle than to anything most people picture when they hear the word blueberry. In winter the late-maturing foliage takes on a reddish cast and the stems darken to a distinct red, which is where the name comes from. This is a winter plant, not a spring one, and the color is the whole argument.
The creeping blueberry is the ground-hugging cousin of the fruiting kinds, a low, evergreen, native groundcover of the Carolina coastal plain that trades height for reach. 'Well's Delight' is a North Carolina State University selection from the southeastern corner of that state, named for the late Dr. B.W. Wells, the pioneering North Carolina ecologist, and set apart by small, shiny leaves even finer than the usual for the species. The botanical name crassifolium means thick-leaved, for the firm little evergreen leaves that line the trailing stems.
Darrow's blueberry is the silver-leaved evergreen of the group, a low, fine-textured native of the pine flatwoods and sandy scrub from southern Georgia through Florida to eastern Louisiana. The species honors George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose breeding work built much of the modern blueberry, and the wild plant has passed its own heat tolerance into many of today's Southern highbush cultivars. 'John Blue' is a North Carolina State University selection chosen for looks as much as fruit, and the leaves are the reason.
Darrow's blueberry is the fine-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low, glaucous native of the sandy pinelands from Georgia to Florida, named for George M. Darrow, the United States Department of Agriculture scientist whose work built much of the modern blueberry. Most plants carry the usual blue-green foliage, but 'Rosa's Blush' was chosen for something showier: new growth flushed with generous pink tints that light up the shrub, a character strongest in plants from Highlands County, Florida, and noted among several clones in the North Carolina State University breeding program.
Darrow's blueberry is the small-leaved evergreen of the Southern blueberries, a low native of the sandy pinelands of the Deep South, named for George M. Darrow of the United States Department of Agriculture, whose breeding work shaped the modern blueberry. Most plants of the species carry blue-green foliage, but 'Sebring' is a clone Woodlanders found in Highlands County, Florida and selected for the very small, bright green leaves that give the shrub a fine, tidy texture all its own.
Elliott's blueberry is one of the finest of the wild Southern blueberries, a tall, multi-stemmed deciduous native reaching up to ten feet, with slender twigs and small, glossy green leaves. The species honors Stephen Elliott, the early nineteenth-century South Carolina botanist whose Sketch of the Botany of South Carolina and Georgia remains a landmark of Southern natural history. The old country name mayberry nods to the fruit, which ripens early, sometimes as soon as May in the warm South.
Shiny blueberry is the little evergreen groundcover blueberry of the Southern Coastal Plain, a low, dense native rarely more than knee-high, spreading gently by rhizome into a fine, glossy-leaved mat. The species name myrsinites likens the small, lustrous leaves to those of myrtle, and the common name shiny blueberry says the same: the whole plant catches light on foliage barely an inch long.
Vaccinium sempervirens is one of the rarest plants in this catalog, an evergreen blueberry known in the wild from a single sandy corner of Lexington County, in the Sandhills of South Carolina. A true local endemic, the plant grows along Atlantic white cedar bogs and seepage slopes where the water table sits high and the sand stays acid, and to grow one is to hold a small piece of a landscape almost nobody has seen.
Deerberry is the odd one out among the wild Southern blueberries, a loose, variable native shrub of dry, sandy uplands, pinewoods, and old-field edges across the eastern and central United States. The flowers give the plant its botanical name: where most blueberries hide their stamens inside closed urns, deerberry opens wide, greenish-white bells with the yellow stamens thrust well beyond the petals, so the species is stamineum, of the stamens. The common name is plainer still, since deer are as fond of the ripe fruit as any creature in the woods.
Small black blueberry is a low, delicate native of the sandy soils and pine barrens of the Southeastern coastal plain, a slender member of the heath family long gathered from the wild for its fruit. The species name tenellum means dainty or tender, a fair description of the fine stems and small leaves, and the common name points to the little dark berries that ripen almost black in late summer.
