About Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton
Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton, commonly called lowbush blueberry, is a low, spreading deciduous shrub that grows 5 to 60 centimetres (2 to 23+1⁄2 inches) tall. Its rhizomes can remain dormant for up to 100 years, and will sprout when exposed to adequate sunlight, soil moisture, and oxygen content. In summer, its leaves are glossy blue-green, and turn various shades of red in autumn. Leaves are broad to elliptical in shape, and brownish-red buds form in the stem axils. The flowers are white or pink, bell-shaped, and 4 to 6 millimetres (1⁄8 to 1⁄4 inch) long. The fruit is a small, sweet dark blue to black berry, that contains high levels of antioxidants and flavonoids. A healthy stem may grow several buds, and each open bud can produce multiple blossoms. A fully covered lowbush blueberry field can support up to 150 million blossoms per acre. The species has a chromosome number of 2n = 48. Lowbush blueberry is native to central and eastern Canada, ranging from Manitoba to Newfoundland, as well as north-central and eastern United States, growing as far south as the Great Smoky Mountains and west to the Great Lakes region. In its native habitat, the plant grows in open conifer woods, old fields, and sandy or rocky balds. Ice Age glacier ice sculpted the Maine landscape and created some of the most productive habitats for V. angustifolium. The species is fire-tolerant, and its population numbers often increase in an area following a forest fire. It grows best in wooded areas, old abandoned farmyards, or open areas with well-drained acidic soils. In some regions, it forms natural blueberry barrens, where it is practically the only species covering large areas. Many animals feed on the fruit and foliage of lowbush blueberry, including black bears, raccoons, foxes, white-tailed deer, and birds. Its leaves are also commonly eaten by caterpillars. It acts as a larval host for the pale tiger moth, the peppered moth, the chain-dotted geometer, the saw-wing moth, the blueberry gray moth, the mousy angle moth, Caloptilia vacciniella, Andromeda underwing, the shadowy arches, the two-spot dart, the dingy cutworm moth, the speckled cutworm, the decorated owlet, the pirate looper, Norman's dart, the gray swordgrass moth, the pink-edged sulphur butterfly, the pawpaw sphinx moth, and the blueberry leaftier moth. During the fruit-bearing harvest year, commercial blueberry growers rent honey bee hives to place in their fields for pollination. These hives are placed at densities ranging from 1 to 8 hives per acre. Hives are added to fields when 10-20% of blooms are open, to ensure bees have enough forage on site instead of foraging elsewhere. Hives are left in blueberry fields for an average of two weeks, to allow pollination of all field clones, which bloom at different times over the two-week bloom period. Some growers also use bumblebees to achieve maximum pollination. Bumblebees will fly in colder and wetter weather conditions than honey bees, and they pollinate flowers differently: bumblebees can sonicate flowers to release pollen from deep inside poricidal anthers, a process called buzz pollination. Blueberry growers also rely on many wild bee species for pollination, including solitary bees such as Andrena carlini and Colletes inaequalis. Vaccinium angustifolium follows a two-year production cycle. The first year is the vegetative year, and the second is the fruit-bearing year. To get a harvest every year, most farmers split their land so half their crop is in the vegetative year and half is in the fruit-bearing year at any given time. Traditionally, blueberry growers burn their fields every few years to remove unwanted shrubs and fertilize the soil. In Acadian French, a blueberry field is called a brûlis (from brûlé meaning 'burnt') because of this technique, which is still used today.
