The dwarf huckleberry (Gaylussacia dumosa (Andrews) Torrey and A. Gray) has a range from Louisiana to Florida and north to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec. It is a tiny shrub seldom larger than 24 inches, but usually much smaller. In the northern part of its range, it is a plant of bogs and wet sandy soils. In the southern part, it is likely to be found equally on dry or moist sands. In Florida, it is a diminutive shrub in saw palmetto prairies and pine flatwoods.

Dwarf huckleberry blooms in spring—early May in the south, mid to late June in the north. The campanulate (bell-shaped) flowers are white to light pink and are borne on racemes with leafy-bracts. The fruit appears in August and September.

Huckleberries are related to blueberries and the fruit looks like a somewhat fuzzy blueberry. There,the resemblance ends. Blueberries are true berries—many-seeded fruits. Huckleberries are drupes like olives or cherries. But this drupe is an exception to the rule; instead of a single hard seed, it has 10 hard nutlets which are the true fruits of the huckleberry.

Huckleberries are an important source of pollen and nectar to wild bees. Seldom does one find the ripe “berries”. Ground dwelling birds, small mammals and even gopher tortoises run off with them long before a bungling human spots them.

 

(Compiled from: Gray’s Manual of Botany, Rewritten and Expanded by Merritt Lyndon Fernald, Eighth (Centennial) Edition, Dioscorides Press, Portland Oregon, second printing 1989; Hortus Third, Staff L.H. Bailey Hortorium, NY State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Macmillan, NY, 1976; Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants, Wunderlin, R. P., and B. F. Hansen, Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida, Tampa. 2004   [S. M. Landry and K. N. Campbell (application development), Florida Center for Community Design and Research.])