Montana Field Guide

Plants generally in arhizomatous clumps. Stems mostly less than 2 m tall; branchlets of current season sometimes angled, brownish or yellowish to reddish green, glabrous or hairy in lines. Leaf blades 25-55 mm long, 10-25 mm wide, broadly elliptic to ovate or obovate, margins strongly serrate, apex rounded to acute or acuminate. Calyx urceolate to globose, glabrous, green, the lobes typically obscure. Corolla 3-5 mm long x 5-7 mm wide, of varying shades from whitish to pinkish or yellowish-brown; glabrous. Berry typically broade than tall, 8-13 mm wide, waxy-shiny from dark purple-black to reddish or rarely whitish (adapted largely from Vander Kloet 2009 in Flora N. Amer., Vol. 8).

For our plants, Peter Stickney (in Lesica 2012) recognizes a narrower concept of this species, separating out Vaccinium globulare Rybd. based on differences in characters of the leaf blades and corolla.

Cool coniferous forests and open areas especially after disturbance; montane to subapline.

POLLINATORS
The following animal species have been reported as pollinators of this plant species or its genus where their geographic ranges overlap: Bombus vagans, Bombus appositus, Bombus centralis, Bombus fervidus, Bombus flavifrons, Bombus frigidus, Bombus melanopygus, Bombus mixtus, Bombus nevadensis, Bombus rufocinctus, Bombus ternarius, Bombus sitkensis, Bombus occidentalis, Bombus pensylvanicus, Bombus bimaculatus, Bombus griseocollis, Bombus impatiens, Bombus insularis, Bombus bohemicus, and Bombus flavidus (Heinrich 1976, Thorp et al. 1983, MacKenzie and Averill 1995, Stubbs and Drummond 2001, Ratti et al. 2008, Colla and Dumesh 2010, Colla and Ratti 2010, Colla et al. 2011, Williams et al. 2014).