Photo: Raul654, CC BY-SA 3.0, cropped · Wikimedia Commons

Darrow's Blueberry

Vaccinium darrowii

Also called evergreen blueberry, Darrow's evergreen blueberry, Vaccinium myrsinites var. glaucum.

A low evergreen blueberry of Gulf Coast pine flatwoods, with tiny blue-green leaves under a silvery bloom, pink-tinged bells and edible blue berries.

Be first when Darrow's blueberry is priced

Saplings ship bare-root or in a pot, usually 12 to 18 inches tall, in the dormant season, and their height and age are stated here with the price, once available.

We grow it as saplings and seed. One email when it is listed with prices, and nothing else. Or ask, and we reply with what is ready now. Live plants ship October to November.

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Type: Shrub
Mature height: 1–5 ft
USDA zones: 7–10
Growth rate: Medium
Flowers: February to April
Fruit: Berries, May to June
First crop: 3 to 5 years after planting
Mature spread: 2 ft
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average
Grows wild in: Sandy barrens and dry uplands
Native range: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi See what is native in your state

Hardiness zones Find your zone by ZIP code

Darrow's blueberry is a low, silvery evergreen blueberry of the Gulf coastal plain. Breeders have crossed it with highbush blueberry and our rabbiteye blueberry to make the southern highbush blueberries. It gave them a low need for winter chill, tolerance of hot, wet summers and resistance to leaf diseases. Most of those crosses go back to a single wild Florida plant, though the species varies widely there. Use it as a low evergreen border or ground cover on sandy, acid soil in sun.

Size, growth and what to expect

No source rates its growth, so our growth estimator treats it as a medium grower, like our creeping blueberry, and gives it 6 inches to a foot a year. It makes a low evergreen shrub 1 to 5 feet tall, most often about 2 feet, with pale, waxy twigs. It spreads by underground runners into open colonies, and one clone can reach about 50 feet across.

Its leathery leaves are under half an inch long, blue-green under a whitish bloom and sometimes tinged pink or violet, and they stay on for more than a year. Small bells, white tinged with pink, open from late winter into April. The berries ripen in late spring, blue under a waxy bloom and about a third of an inch across. They are edible, and birds and other wildlife eat them.

It grows wild on the coastal plain of Florida, southern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, near sea level. Its home is low and scrubby pine flatwoods, oak scrub, palmetto scrub, sand hills and swales.

How to grow Darrow's Blueberry

Darrow's blueberry grows in full sun or part shade. It needs a sandy, acid soil, seasonally moist to dry, that never floods, and it will not take salt spray or salty ground. Set plants 2 feet apart, and keep them 2 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them in fall or winter, 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 straw or pine bark, clear of the stems. The seed is tiny and needs light to sprout. Keep the dry seed in the refrigerator for 60 to 90 days. Then sow it on the surface of a moist, acid mix, uncovered, in light.

Water weekly through the first summer while the roots take hold, then only in a long drought. It needs no pruning, and the colony can be left to spread.

Darrow's blueberry sets far more fruit with pollen from another plant, and some plants set none with their own, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents. Native bees and honey bees work the flowers.

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

Sources (9)