I am in southeastern WV with sandy, acid soil and I have a huge bearberry that I planted some years ago. It's thick, healthy, weed suppressing (and highly deer resistant), not to mention handsome, but in all these years I have never had a single berry. I am convinced that these plants are not self fertile and must have another clone somewhere nearby to produce berries.

I tried several in various spots around my property perhaps 15 years ago and none survived even though they were grown from a Maine population. I've used cranberry more successfully. I don't know what it is that they didn't like about my soil or gardens, or if they are just popular with the voles which are a constant issue.

As Embo mentioned, this is a stock groundcover item in this areas and is planted extensively. In fact, kinnikinnick (as it is known here) and Cotoneaster dammeri (which is more usually referred to here as bearberry) are the largest selling groundcovers at my nursery by a very wide margin.

I haven't tried it, but I'd think it would do reasonably well our well-drained, acid soils. I really can't say why I haven't tried it, but you've piqued my interest.

It's a manzanita, albeit a much more widespread one than usual. But both wild colonies and artificial plantings here show the same tendency to want to grow out over hot, barren soils, migrate away from shading as patch in above pictures may be demonstrating. Local plantings are pretty consistent about being quite blackened where shaded and cleaner where the exposure is more favorable - within the same planting.

The upright manzanita native here is also a disease magnet. So much so that it remains scarce in commerce, despite a demand from contractors trying to meet specifications for large scale re-vegetation projects. This and the prostrate species are (apparently) sufficiently close genetically that they rather often cross to produce an intermediate hybrid which is also grown and sold by nurseries.

Might work for you maack, not for me over in limey east-central.

The more I think about it, the more I think it would work here. We've got Gaultheria procumbens growing wild, which is also in the heath family. I only find it in a woodland setting, but you'd think the two plants would have some overlap. Sam, did you happen to see any Gaultheria during your trip to the Barrens?

Gaultheria in photo with hat. I have Gaultheria, but it didn't make my Arctostaphylos uva-ursi any happier. I have well-drained acid fine sandy loam.

Missed that! Yeah, I should probably just enjoy the wild Gaultheria. Do you ever see Lycopodium? Seems to like similar conditions as Gautheria.

Yup, I have Lycopodium, partridge berry/Mitchella repens, a few kinds of native sedges/Carex and ferns, and low bush blueberries/Vaccinium as other groundcovers that occur on their own in conjunction with the wintergreen/Gaultheria.

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi is a great plant - go ahead and try it and report back if you are more successful than I was.

laceyvail wrote I am convinced that these plants are not self-fertile ....

I can agree with that. HERE is an American Nurseryman article about another member of the Heath Family, Gaylussacia brachycera or Box Huckleberry. I've seen the colony at New Bloomfield PA which covers several acres. It is one clone which has steadily advanced for centuries. It seems that plants like this are perfectly happy living a "celibate" life.

Both the arctostaphylos and the gaultheria are self-fertile. In fact, the entire Ericaceae possesses perfect flowers so technically should all be self-fertile, although some are effectively self-incompatible and do benefit from cross pollination.

"...effectively self-incompatible..."

That's just sad...

Haha...not if its genetic recombinations you're after!

Well, mine must be "effectively self-incompatible" because not one single flower in over 12 years. The plant itself is at least 15 feet in diameter.

If your bearberry doesn't flower, there must be something else going on - perhaps some clones are less floriferous than others? Self-incompatible means no berries formed when it flowers since the pollen won't fertilize its own blooms rather than no flowers.

Some plants developed mechanisms to inhibit self-fertilization. The evolutionary driving force appears to be the fact that populations of a given plant species tend to do better when genes are more regularly and thoroughly mixed up. If a plant merely self-fertilizes, you don't get that opportunity.

Oh, duh, didn't mean to write that my plant never flowers. It flowers beautifully, but never ever a single berry.

The topic is an interesting one and probably worthy of a new thread. The box huckleberry that I mentioned earlier is estimated to be 13,000 years old making it easily the oldest living plant. It flowers profusely but does not produce fruit because it is a clone. Search Gaylussacia brachycera USNA Pooler - Dix if you want to know more. We talked about the same phenomena with pawpaw, large clonal colonies which seldom or never produce fruit. Maybe someone closer to New Bloomfield PA than I could go and take pix and make observations (Poakie are you listening?)

" estimated to be 13,000 years old making it easily the oldest living plant"...... ...except that maybe some other clonal plant populations, like the big aspen patch in Colorado for one example....could also be of such great antiquity. And these are only known, identified examples. I seriously doubt-for example-that anyone has explored all the clonal aspen colonies in say....Upper Michigan.

Recently I saw a staggering age claimed for a huge old clonal aspen patch, something like 80,000 years.

A wetland near me has an aspen or aspens that periodically topple into the water, then re-sprout instead of dying. At the moment where there had been a grove is now a few vertical trunks here and there. But the timing might suggest this is a new circumstance due to the installation of a housing development along and above one edge of the site.

Yeah, the Pando aspen grove in Utah is generally recognized as being the oldest and the largest living organism on the planet. Although it may not hold these titles indefinitely - there's some thought the grove is slowly dying out.

My neighbor across from me has some in a bed along with evergreen azaleas and chrysanthemums.

Some what, Logan? Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), Gaultheria, aspens, pawpaws. What?

The "some" is bearberry, obviously. This is a thread about bearberry, not gaultheria, aspens, and pawpaws.

80,000 year old aspen grove, Remarkable indeed seeing how they would have been underneath a mile of ice at the time :)

Recently my part of the country hosted their annual nursery trade show with 960 vendors. Wanna know how many were displaying bearberry??? Zilch, Nada, Nary a one. Its just not a plant seen very often around here. I've seen it only one time in a cultivated setting, along a govt building in DC where it grew happily. Undeterred by bad luck at the trade show I did in fact find a wholesale nursery in New Jersey with a beautiful supply of plants, not that it bothers me but this is clearly a clone, no berries.

Yes the last ice sheet was only 10,000 years ago. However there are other species of cold climate adapted plants present in my State that are known to have retreated to mountain tops and lived there during the last glacial advance, then returned to other sites after the ice retreated.

Bear-berry is an essentially northern plant, actually worldwide in distribution. Once you get far enough South it is going to start to be too hot for it in most locations. Because it is a heath the soil will often be too hot even if it might take the higher air temperatures.

I don't think the continental ice sheets reached as far south as Utah, much less up in the mountains. Those ice sheets were in the lowlands. The mountains had their own smaller glaciers. The ice sheets gouged out Puget sound but left the mountains pretty much alone.

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi is so common here it's quite often used in commercial parking strip planting areas as a groundcover. Here's some at the local auto parts store with Pieris japonica.

Heath family theme planting. Red pieris cultivar appears to be mixed with a white one as though the production facility planted more than one cutting in the pot (for density) and the varieties weren't kept straight.

Yup, I'd favor that over a reversion, because they're almost equal in size.

Mike..in for lunch.

Tips of the white look like it might be 'Mountain Fire'.

Good eye! I hadn't noticed the red new growth down low on the right. Mountain fire is my favorite Pieris. I've even used it for hedges (unsheared, of course) because I propagated it so much from cuttings and had extras.