Photo: Fritzflohrreynolds, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Deerberry
Vaccinium stamineum
Also called highbush huckleberry, southern gooseberry.
Open white bells with yellow stamens in May, then dangling green to purple berries for grouse, turkeys and bears; the blueberry of dry sandy woods.
Wildlife valueShowy flowersDrought tolerantFall colorRare
- Type
- Shrub
- Mature height
- 5–15 ft
- USDA zones
- 5–9
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Sun
- Full · Part
- Soil moisture
- Dry · Average
210
Deerberry is the blueberry of dry oak and pine woods, native from Maine and Ontario to Kansas and Texas on sandy or rocky acid ground, and at home across Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania. In May the branches hang with wide-open white bells, unlike any other blueberry, each with a ring of yellow stamens reaching past the petals; the berries that follow in late summer, green, yellow or purple with a pale bloom and sour to us, are stripped by songbirds, grouse, turkeys, deer and bears. Blueberries are a keystone genus, host to 217 kinds of caterpillars, the brown elfin and red-spotted purple among them, and to more pollen-specialist bees than any eastern woody plant but willow; two of those bees, both found in Maryland, take pollen from deerberry alone, and bumble bees buzz the pollen out of the flowers. Perfect for a dry acid slope under oaks and pines, a sandy edge or a bee planting by the blueberries.
It is almost never sold, since the blueberry trade is fruit cultivars of highbush and rabbiteye, so few gardeners have seen its flowers. It grows 5 to 15 feet tall, most often 6 to 10, suckering into a loose colony, with shreddy bark, zigzag twigs and leaves that turn red and maroon in fall. Like every blueberry it needs acid soil, yellowing in sweet or limed soil, and sharp drainage. The name is honest: deer eat the ripe fruit off the bush.
How to grow Deerberry
Deerberry is hardy in zones 5 through 9 and grows in full sun or the part shade of high oaks and pines. It must have acid soil, pH below 6, with sharp drainage; in sweet or limed soil the leaves yellow. Once established it takes drought. It grows 5 to 15 feet tall, usually 6 to 10, and 6 to 12 feet wide, and suckers, so set plants 6 feet apart.
Plant a dormant bare-root or potted shrub from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, crown at the soil line, native soil back in, and a mulch of pine straw or oak leaves kept off the stems; no lime, no fertilizer. The seed is small and needs light and usually a cold spell: clean it from ripe berries in water, sow it on the surface of a flat of moist acid mix, uncovered, and leave the flat outdoors for the winter, or give it 60 to 90 days in a damp bag in the refrigerator and sow in spring. Keep the flat shaded and moist; it comes up in spring.
Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short; after that it needs nothing. Deer browse the leaves as well as the fruit and rabbits nip young stems, so cage plants for two or three years where deer are heavy, and keep mulch thin at the stems so voles do not nest there. Prune only dead wood.
Growth is moderate. Deerberry appears to need pollen from another plant to set a full crop, so plant two or more within a few yards and let the bees work; the berries ripen from August into September and hang until the birds and deer take them. Yellow leaves with green veins mean the soil is too sweet.
Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.
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