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Highbush Blueberry
(Vaccinium corymbosum)
A native plant.
The picture is of one of our new bushes this year. The berries were really yummy, but after the really hot spell they weren't as good.
If you like blueberry pancakes or blueberry pie or just plain blueberries you have to thank this native plant. All the blueberry growers in the northern states depend on varieties developed from this shrub. Breeders would pick bushes that had bigger berries or less problems with diseases and gradually develop improved blueberry bushes. Once a bush is improved and can be propagated it is named and sold.
You may have a bush named after you! Check the following list of blueberries now available (there are many, many more than this): Murphy, Cabot, Collins, Stanley, Herbert, Katherine, Sam and Ivanhoe.
In the wild this plant is very important to wildlife. Birds adore the fruit. Bears and other smaller mammels love it too. Deer and rabbits eat the foliage and twigs.
If you grow blueberries you have to cover the bushes with bird netting if you want to pick the crop!As a landscaping plant the blueberry does well . It has nice red fall color.
Here are the blooms, photographed the first spring the plants were in the garden.
The flowers are shaped like little bells.
Study Pointers:
- Keep checking for flowers in the spring. When you spot some buds compare this Highbush specie to the Lowbush one. Are they going to bloom at the same time? Check the flowers. Are they the same? Later, compare the berries.
- After doing all that. what do you think? Do you think you could have guessed these two plants were related?
- Make a quick list of things they have in common and another of how they differ.
to the Lowbush Blueberry page to the Creeping Blueberry page
to Schoolyard Habitat Index
to Waddell School Introduction Page
to What's New! at the school
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