Photo: Stephanie Harvey, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Elliott's Blueberry

Vaccinium elliottii

Also called mayberry.

A wild southern blueberry that hangs white bells on bare twigs before its leaves, ripens sweet black berries by early summer and turns scarlet in fall.

EdibleShowy flowersFall colorWildlife valueWinter interest

Type: Shrub
Mature height: 4–10 ft
USDA zones: 5–9
Growth rate: Medium
Sun: Full, Part
Soil moisture: Dry, Average
Grows wild in: Floodplain forests, stream banks, the forest understory and sandy barrens
Native range: 11 states, north to Virginia, south to Florida and west to Texas
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Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia
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Elliott's blueberry, also called mayberry, is a wild blueberry of the Southeast with glossy leaves about an inch long and reddish bark that shreds. Its berries are sweet, where those of our deerberry are sour. Blueberry breeders prize it for its early bloom, its pleasant flavor and its tolerance of upland soils, and it is in the ancestry of the cultivars 'Snowchaser' and 'Carteret'. Tennessee lists it as endangered. Its scarlet fall leaves cling to the stems well into winter. Plant it at a sunny woodland edge or in a mixed hedge, where birds and people can share the early berries.

Size, growth and what to expect

Elliott's blueberry grows at a medium pace, about a foot and a half a year in our growth estimator. It makes an upright shrub of 4 to 10 feet with several stems.

White to pink bells open from February to April, before or with the first leaves. The black berries, about a third of an inch across, ripen in May and June and taste sweet. Birds and small mammals eat them, and native bees work the flowers.

It grows wild from southeastern Virginia to Florida and west to Texas and Arkansas. Its home is bottomland forest, riverbanks, open flatwoods and dry slopes. In a planting study, seedlings survived and grew better in upland forest than in bottomland, and better in drought than in flooding.

How to grow Elliott's Blueberry

Elliott's blueberry grows in full sun or part shade, and full sun gives the most fruit. It wants an acid soil, sandy or loamy, that stays moist but drains well. Lime turns its leaves yellow, so keep it off limed ground. Shelter it from strong winds. Set plants 6 feet apart and keep them 3 feet from a wall. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship potted. Its roots resent being disturbed, so move each plant once, from its pot to its place. Plant it while dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the root ball and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and mulch with pine straw or oak leaves, clear of the stems. Seed is hard to raise, since chilled seed barely comes up. Seed given a warm, damp spell and then the cold does sprout, but the seedlings grow very slowly. Sow it on the surface of a moist, acid mix, in light.

Water weekly through the first summer, then in long dry spells. Deer browse the stems and birds take the fruit, so cage young plants and net the bushes if you want berries. Prune right after the berries ripen, so the plants stay low enough to pick the next year.

Elliott's blueberry sets little or no fruit with its own pollen, so plant two or more seedlings from different parents and let the bees carry pollen between them. Stem blight, root rot, cane cankers, mildew and gray mold turn up now and then. Blueberry maggot, cherry fruitworm and spotted wing drosophila can attack the fruit.

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

Sources (14)