Vaccinium oxycoccos (Dwarf Bog Cranberry) - photos and description
Origin: Native.
General: Tiny bog shrubs with trailing stems and a near prostate growth habit. Flower stalks are glabrous or pubescent. Plants are evergreen.
Flowers: Flowers 1 to 2 on short stalks, drooping, pinkish-red with reflexed petals, similar to those of Shooting Star (Dodecatheon spp.). Flowers to 7 mm long. Flower stalks curved downwards at the summit.
Fruit: Is a small, edible, red-coloured berry.
Leaves: Leaves alternate, are small, oblanceolate to elliptical, glossy dark green above, grey green below, leathery, with edges rolled under. Leaves glabrous. We measured a leaf at 1 cm long and 4 mm wide.
Height: We measured flowering stems to 4 cm tall.
Habitat: Wet sphagnum moss in bogs in the boreal forest.
Abundance: Common.
Synonym: Listed in some of the field guides we use as Oxycoccus microcarpus.
When and where photographed: Took the above photos on June 18th, mossy black woods edge of pitcher plant bog, Hudson Bay district about 450 km northeast of Regina, SK, and June 22nd, edge of black spruce bog, Nisbet provincial forest, 375 km north of Regina, SK, and June 28th, in a bog in boreal forest in La Ronge district, about 650 km north of our home in Regina, SK.