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Support the Flora of the Southeastern US

2024 has been a banner year for making the best flora we can imagine. We've created:
With financial support from people like you, we are aiming even higher in 2025. Together we can accomplish all this: Vote on our 2025 priorities
  • Add Global Conservation Ranks (GRanks) vote
  • Professional graphic keys (polyclaves) to individual families/genera vote
  • 2 new FloraQuest apps: Florida & Mid-South vote
  • Image overlays highlighting diagnostic characters with arrows vote
  • iNaturalist integration in FloraQuest vote
Write-in vote: vote
We've set a goal of recruiting 200 ongoing supporters to donate $15 or more each month in 2025. Please help us reach this goal and make next year's flora even better:

Click the number at the start of a key lead to highlight both that lead and its corresponding lead. Click again to show only the two highlighted leads. Click a third time to return to the full key with the selected leads still highlighted.

Key to Vaccinium

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1 Trailing vines, erect shoots (if present) borne on horizontal stems; leaves evergreen, glossy and dark green above, rarely exceeding 20 mm in length.
  2 Leaves narrowly elliptic, glabrous above, glaucous-white below; leaf margin entire and eglandular; berry red when ripe, 8-15 mm long; [cranberries; section Oxycoccus]
  2 Leaves elliptic, puberulent above, pale green below; leaf margin obscurely to fairly strongly serrate and glandular; berry black when ripe, 6-8 mm long; [creeping blueberries; section Herpothamnus]
1 Erect shrubs, the growth form various (single-stemmed, multi-stemmed and clump-like, or clonal with numerous erect shoots from a network of subterranean rhizomes); leaves deciduous to semi-evergreen (evergreen in V. myrsinites), dull to somewhat glossy and medium green above (dark green and glossy in V. myrsinites), generally exceeding 20 mm in length (5-30 mm long in V. myrsinites).
    3 Twigs of the season verrucose (the surface abundantly covered with small bumps, readily visible without magnification); [blueberries; section Cyanococcus]
    3 Twigs of the season not verrucose.
      4 Corolla lobes 4, strongly recurved, 7-10 mm long; calyx lobes 4 (also visible on the berry); leaves lanceolate to ovate, the apex acuminate, the margin regularly and finely serrate with glandular teeth; [high elevations in the Mountains]; [mountain cranberry; section Oxycoccoides]
      4 Corolla lobes 5, not or only slightly recurved, 1-8 mm long; calyx lobes 5 (also visible on the berry); leaves elliptic, obovate, oblanceolate, or nearly round, the apex generally obtuse to rounded, the margin entire to obscurely and irregularly serrate; [collectively widespread in our area, but not at high elevations].
        5 Mature leaves green (or glaucous), glandular beneath, mostly elliptic to round, generally 1.5-4.5 cm long; corolla broad-urceolate to narrow-campanulate, the stamens included; berry black, lustrous, 5-9 mm long; [farkleberry; section Batodendron]
        5 Mature leaves pale and glaucous, eglandular beneath, mostly elliptic, 3-10 cm long; corolla campanulate, the stamens long-exserted; berry green, yellow, pink, or purple, usually glaucous, 7-18 mm long; [deerberries; section Polycodium]