Photo: Marian Ellis Rowan, Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Bear Huckleberry

Gaylussacia ursina

Also called mountain huckleberry, buckberry, Vaccinium ursinum.

A colony-forming huckleberry of southern Appalachian oak and pine woods, with greenish bells in May, glossy black berries and fall color.

RareWildlife valueFall colorEdible

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 1–5 ft
USDA zones: 7–8
Growth rate: Slow
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average
Grows wild in: The Appalachians, dry uplands and the forest understory
Native range: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Bear huckleberry is a huckleberry of the southern Appalachians, where it is often a dominant shrub under oaks and pines on dry mountain slopes. It grows wild mostly in the mountains of southwestern North Carolina and nearby corners of South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. Kentucky lists it as endangered. Unlike our dangleberry, it has thinner, pointed leaves, green on both sides, and glossy black rather than blue berries. Grow it as a deciduous ground layer under oaks and pines on a dry, acid slope, where its fall color and black berries show.

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as slow, like our black huckleberry, about a foot a year. It stands 1 to 5 feet tall and spreads by shallow runners into colonies, sending up a new shoot about every foot.

Four to six greenish white bells hang in loose clusters in May and June. The glossy black berries, about a third of an inch across, ripen from July to September. Sources differ on their taste, from juicy and sweet to insipid. The leaves usually color well in fall. Huckleberry fruits feed grouse, wild turkeys, foxes, raccoons and black bears.

It grows wild in the mountains of southwestern North Carolina and neighboring South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee, and rarely in Kentucky. Its home is dry oak and pine woods, Table Mountain pine woodlands and hemlock slopes, from about 1,600 to 5,000 feet.

How to grow Bear Huckleberry

Bear huckleberry grows in part shade or sun, like the open oak and pine woods where it is most at home. It wants a shallow, acid, fast-draining soil low in nutrients. It thrives on dry slopes where summer droughts are common. Set plants 3 feet apart and keep them 3 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and mulch with pine needles or oak leaves, clear of the stems. It has been raised from seed. Treat it like black huckleberry seed, warm and damp for a month and then cool for two months, around 45 to 50 degrees. Then sow it in a damp peat and sand mix.

Water through dry spells in the first summer while the runners take hold. The runners stay in the top few inches of soil, so do not dig or hoe around it. Its flowers form on two-year-old wood, so it needs no pruning.

Each flower carries both male and female parts, and bees and small butterflies are the chief pollinators of huckleberries. Its relatives box huckleberry and black huckleberry set little or no fruit with their own pollen, so plant two or more bear huckleberries from different parents for berries.

Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.

Sources (8)

Plan the planting