Vaccinium oxycoccos | |
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Fruit on a bed of Sphagnum rubellum | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Clade: | Tracheophytes |
Clade: | Angiosperms |
Clade: | Eudicots |
Clade: | Asterids |
Order: | Ericales |
Family: | Ericaceae |
Genus: | Vaccinium |
Subgenus: | Vaccinium subg. Oxycoccus |
Species: | V. oxycoccos |
Binomial name | |
Vaccinium oxycoccos L. 1753 | |
Synonyms [3] [4] | |
Synonymy
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Vaccinium oxycoccos is a species of flowering plant in the heath family. It is known as small cranberry, marshberry, bog cranberry, swamp cranberry, [5] or, particularly in Britain, just cranberry. [6] It is widespread throughout the cool temperate northern hemisphere, including northern Europe, northern Asia and northern North America. [5]
This cranberry is a small, prostrate shrub with vine-like stems that root at the nodes. The leaves are leathery and lance-shaped, up to 1 cm (0.39 in) long. [5] Flowers arise on nodding stalks a few centimeters tall. The corolla is white or pink and flexed backward away from the center of the flower. The fruit is a red berry which has spots when young. It measures up to 1.2 cm (0.47 in) wide. [4] [7] The plant forms associations with mycorrhizae. It mainly reproduces vegetatively. [5]
Vaccinium oxycoccos is a widespread and common species occurring broadly across cooler climates in the temperate northern hemisphere. [5] [2] [8] [9] [10] It is an indicator of moist to wet soils which are low in nitrogen and have a high water table. It is an indicator of coniferous swamps. It grows in bogs and fens in moist forest habitat. It grows on peat which may be saturated most of the time. The soil in bogs is acidic and low in nutrients. The plant's mycorrhizae help it obtain nutrients in this situation. Fens have somewhat less acidic soil, which is also higher in nutrients. The plant can often be found growing on hummocks of Sphagnum mosses.
In North America, other species found in this forest understory habitat include leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata), bog rosemary (Andromeda glaucophylla), bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia), pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea), Labrador tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum), cloudberry (Rubus chamaemorus), rhodora (Rhododendron canadense), glossy buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula), sundew ( Drosera spp.), cottonsedge (Eriophorum virginatum and E. angustifolium), and species of sedge and lichen. The plant easily colonizes bog habitat that has recently burned. It survives fire with its underground rhizomes. [4] [5]
The berries of Vaccinium oxycoccos are edible [11] and have been used both as a medicine and as a food by various Native American communities. Some Iñupiat cook the cranberry with fish eggs and blubber. [12] [13]
The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c. 4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it the 14th most species-rich family of flowering plants. The many well known and economically important members of the Ericaceae include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, rhododendron, and various common heaths and heathers.
Vaccinium is a common and widespread genus of shrubs or dwarf shrubs in the heath family (Ericaceae). The fruits of many species are eaten by humans and some are of commercial importance, including the cranberry, blueberry, bilberry (whortleberry), lingonberry (cowberry), and huckleberry. Like many other ericaceous plants, they are generally restricted to acidic soils.
Vaccinium macrocarpon, also called large cranberry, American cranberry and bearberry, is a North American species of cranberry in the subgenus Oxycoccus.
Larix laricina, commonly known as the tamarack, hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch, is a species of larch native to Canada, from eastern Yukon and Inuvik, Northwest Territories east to Newfoundland, and also south into the upper northeastern United States from Minnesota to Cranesville Swamp, West Virginia; there is also an isolated population in central Alaska.
Cornus canadensis is a species of flowering plant in the dogwood family Cornaceae, native to eastern Asia and North America. Common names include Canadian dwarf cornel, Canadian bunchberry, quatre-temps, crackerberry, and creeping dogwood. Unlike its relatives, which are for the most part substantial trees and shrubs, C. canadensis is a creeping, rhizomatous perennial growing to about 20 centimetres tall.
Calla is a genus of flowering plant in the family Araceae, containing the single species Calla palustris.
Vaccinium angustifolium, commonly known as the wild lowbush blueberry, is a species of blueberry native to eastern and central Canada and the northeastern United States, growing as far south as the Great Smoky Mountains and west to the Great Lakes region. Vaccinium angustifolium is the most common species of the commercially used wild blueberries and is considered the "low sweet" berry.
Vaccinium corymbosum, the northern highbush blueberry, is a North American species of blueberry which has become a food crop of significant economic importance. It is native to eastern Canada and the eastern and southern United States, from Ontario east to Nova Scotia and south as far as Florida and eastern Texas. It is also naturalized in other places: Europe, Japan, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest of North America, etc. Other common names include blue huckleberry, tall huckleberry, swamp huckleberry, high blueberry, and swamp blueberry.
Vaccinium uliginosum is a Eurasian and North American flowering plant in the genus Vaccinium within the heath family.
The New England-Acadian forests are a temperate broadleaf and mixed forest ecoregion in North America that includes a variety of habitats on the hills, mountains and plateaus of New England and New York State in the Northeastern United States, and Quebec and the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada.
Eurybia radula, commonly known as the low rough aster or rough wood aster, is an herbaceous perennial in the family Asteraceae. It is native to eastern North America where it is present from Newfoundland and Labrador in the far northeast of Canada, west to Ontario and south to Kentucky and Virginia in the United States. The low rough aster is also present on the French overseas territory of St. Pierre and Miquelon just south of Newfoundland. It typically grows in wet soils in a wide variety of habitats from bogs and fens to creek shores to ditches. Although it is not considered threatened over most of its distribution, it is imperiled or possibly extirpated over much of its range in the United States. Its flower heads emerge in the late summer to early fall and show pale blue-violet rays with yellow centres.
Vaccinium cespitosum, known as the dwarf bilberry, dwarf blueberry, or dwarf huckleberry, is a species of flowering shrub in the genus Vaccinium, which includes blueberries, huckleberries, and cranberries.
Erigeron strigosus is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known by the common names prairie fleabane, common eastern fleabane, and daisy fleabane.
Ireland is in the Atlantic European Province of the Circumboreal Region, a floristic region within the Holarctic.
Vaccinium pallidum is a species of flowering plant in the heath family known by the common names hillside blueberry, Blue Ridge blueberry, late lowbush blueberry, and early lowbush blueberry. It is native to central Canada (Ontario) and the central and eastern United States plus the Ozarks of Missouri, Arkansas, southeastern Kansas and eastern Oklahoma.
Penthorum sedoides, known by the common name ditch stonecrop, is a perennial forb native to the eastern United States and Canada which produces small white flowers in
Crepis nicaeensis is a European species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae with the common names French hawk's-beard and Turkish hawksbeard. It is widespread across much of Europe, as well as being sparingly naturalized in scattered locations in the United States and Canada.
Solidago uliginosa, or bog goldenrod, is a North American species of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. It is found in eastern Canada and the eastern United States.
Triantha glutinosa is a species of flowering plant in the Tofieldiaceae family. It is commonly known as the sticky false asphodel, sticky tofieldia or northern bog asphodel, is a species of flowering plant in the tofieldia family.
Vaccinium fuscatum, the black highbush blueberry, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family (Ericaceae). It is native to North America, where it is found in Ontario, Canada and the eastern United States. Its typical natural habitat is wet areas such as bogs, pocosins, and swamps.