7. VACCINIUM L.
Shrubs or rarely small trees, with slender branchlets, and fibrous roots. Leaves thin or coriaceous, deciduous or persistent. Flowers small, on bibracteolate pedicels, in many-branched axillary racemes, or solitary, their bracts small or foliaceous; calyx-tube adnate to the ovary, 4—5-lobed, the lobes valvate in the bud, persistent; corolla epigynous, 4 or 5-toothed, the teeth imbricated in the bud, urceolate-campanulate; stamens 8—10, inserted on the base of the corolla under the thick obscurely lobed epigynous disk; filaments filiform, free, usually hirsute; anthers awned on the back, the cells produced upward into erect spreading tubes dehiscent by a terminal pore; ovary inferior, 4 or 5-celled, the cells sometimes imperfectly divided by the development from the back of a false partition; style filiform, erect; stigma minute; ovules attached to the interior angle of the cell by a 2-lipped placenta, anatropous. Fruit a berry crowned with the calyx-limb, 4 or 5 or imperfectly 8 or 10-celled, the cells many-seeded. Seed minute, compressed, ovoid or reniform; seed-coat crustaceous; embryo clavate, minute, surrounded by fleshy albumen, axile, erect; cotyledons ovate; radicle terete, turned toward the hilum.
Vaccinium with about one hundred species is distributed through the boreal and temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and occurs within the tropics at high altitudes north and south of the equator. Of the twenty-five or thirty species which occur in North America one is small trees. The fruits of many of the species are edible, the most valuable being the North American Vaccinium macrocarpum L., the Cranberry.
Vaccinium is the classical name of one of the Old World species.
1. [Vaccinium arboreum] Marsh. Farkleberry. Sparkleberry.
Leaves obovate, oblong-oval or occasionally orbicular, acute, or rounded and apiculate at apex, gradually or abruptly cuneate at base, obscurely glandular-dentate or entire, with thickened slightly revolute margins, light red and more or less pilose or puberulous when they unfold, and at maturity coriaceous, dark green and lustrous above, paler below, glabrous or often puberulous on the midrib and veins, reticulate-venulose, ½′—2½′ long, ¼′—1′ wide, and sessile or short-petiolate; southward persistent for a year, northward deciduous during the winter. Flowers appearing from March to May on slender drooping pedicels ½′ long, bibracteolate near the middle, with 2 minute acute scarious caducous bractlets, solitary in the axils of leaves of the year or arranged in terminal puberulous racemes 2′—3′ long from the axils of leafy or minute acute scarious bracts; corolla white, open-campanulate, slightly 5-lobed, with acute reflexed lobes, longer than the 10 stamens; filaments hirsute; anther-cells opening by oblique elongated pores. Fruit ripening in October, sometimes persistent on the branches until the end of winter, globose, ¼′ in diameter, black and lustrous, with dry glandular slightly astringent flesh of a pleasant flavor.
A tree, 20°—30° high, with a short often crooked trunk occasionally 8′—10′ in diameter, slender more or less contorted branches forming an irregular round-topped head, and slender branchlets light red and covered with pale pubescence when they first appear, glabrous or puberulous and bright red-brown in their first winter, later becoming dark red and marked by minute elevated nearly orbicular leaf-scars; or northward generally reduced to a low shrub, with numerous divergent stems. Winter-buds obtuse, nearly 1/16′ long, with imbricated ovate acute chestnut-brown scales often persistent on the base of the branchlet throughout the season. Wood heavy, hard, very close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick hardly distinguishable sapwood; sometimes used for the handles of tools and in the manufacture of other small articles. Decoctions of the astringent bark of the root and of the leaves are sometimes employed domestically in the treatment of diarrhœa. The bark has been used by tanners.
Distribution. Usually in moist sandy soil along the banks of ponds and streams; southeastern Virginia and North Carolina, from the coast to the valleys of the high Appalachian Mountains, southward to the valley of the Caloosahatchie River, Florida, through the Gulf states to the shores of Matagorda Bay, Texas, and through eastern Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri to southern Illinois, and the bluffs of White River, near Shoals, Martin County, and near Elizabeth, Harrison County, Indiana; common in the maritime Pinebelt of the south Atlantic and Gulf states, and of its largest size near the coast of eastern Texas; in the interior less abundant and usually of small size. Passing into
Vaccinium arboreum var. glaucescens Sarg.
Batodendron glaucescens Greene
Differing in its glaucescent, pubescent or glabrous leaves, in its usually larger leaf-like bracts of the inflorescence and often in its globose-campanulate corolla.
A tree, 10°—20° high, with a short often crooked trunk, pubescent or glabrous gray branchlets, and winter-buds and bark like those of Vaccinium arboreum with which it often grows.
Distribution. Tunnel Hill, Johnson County, Illinois, southern Missouri to eastern Oklahoma (Sapulpa, Creek County) and through Arkansas to western Louisiana (near Shreveport, Rapides Parish) and eastern Texas to Milam County.