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iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Ericaceae family

Elliott's Blueberry Vaccinium elliottii

Native Specialist-bee host
Deer favourite — Rated highly palatable to browsing deer — so where deer are around, expect this one to get nibbled. It's a documented preference, not a certainty: pressure swings with the place and season, and a fenced or low-deer yard may be untouched.

Elliott's Blueberry is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states. It grows to 10 ft and blooms Mar in full sun – part shade, with blue fruit. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
USDA PLANTS — Sun · Soil & moisture
USDA — SoilPH — Soil pH
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fertility Requirement / Soil Adaptation — Fertility need · Adapts to
USDA — Temp-Min °F — Hardiness
Sun
Full sun – part shade
Soil & moisture
Medium moisture
Soil pH
4.5–5.6
Fertility need
Medium
Adapts to
Coarse (sandy), Medium (loam)
Hardiness
USDA zone 7+
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Height, Mature — Height
Derived (allometric) — width = height × functional-class crown ratio fit on USDA Urban Tree DB · Tallo; method per Jucker et al. 2022, Pretzsch et al. 2015 — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Planting Density (per acre) — Spacing
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) · USDA PLANTS — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
McKenzie et al. 2025 — community-science image analysis (MIT) — Flower colour
Height
10 ft
Mature width
~ 8 ft wide DERIVED derived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
Spacing
4–5 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
Slow
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Multiple stems
Lifespan
Perennial · moderate
Foliage
Deciduous broadleaf · fine texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Blue
Flower colour
White AI AI image-analysis of community-science photos (~87% expert agreement) — not a botanical record
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Germination (cold stratification) — Seed starting
USDA PLANTS — Seed Period — Seeds ripen
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Foliage Texture / Browse Palatability / Resprout — Deer browsing · Resprouts if cut
Propagate by
Seed, Cuttings, Bare root, Container
Seed starting
Needs cold stratification a cold-moist spell before it germinates
Seeds ripen
Spring seed-collection / harvest window
In the trade
Routinely available
Deer browsing
High browsed readily
Resprouts if cut
Yes regrows after top-kill
Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Rain garden / bioswale — Rated FACW on the wetland list — tolerates wet feet, so it suits the soggy zone of a rain garden or bioswale that catches and filters runoff.Open guide →
derived roles
AI = read by an AI vision model · DERIVED = a computed estimate, not a direct measurement. The “How we know this” section below details each.
The garden year bloom → fruit → fall colour
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
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Bloom
Fruit
Fall colour
Bloom (the flower's colour) Ripe fruit Fall colour
Bloom · Mar — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — BloomPeriod
Fruit · approximate season (USDA Seed Period), clamped to after bloom
Fall colour · 271 obs · USA-NPN observed “coloured leaves” — timing varies by site & year
When to sow · for your area

Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~294 caterpillar species · keystone genus

Vaccinium supports ~294 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a powerhouse genus.

Recorded feeding on Vaccinium in North America, including:

Abagrotis anchocelioides · owlet moth Abagrotis brunneipennis · owlet moth Abagrotis cupida · Cupid Dart Abagrotis placida · Red Cutworm Moth Achatia distincta · Distinct Quaker Acleris albicomana · Red-Edged Acleris
+ 8 more species →
Acleris curvalana · Blueberry Leaftier Moth Acleris hastiana · leafroller moth Acleris laterana · leafroller moth Acleris lipsiana · leafroller moth Acleris maccana · leafroller moth Acleris macdunnoughi · leafroller moth Acleris maculidorsana · Stained-Back Leafroller Acleris minuta · Yellowheaded Fireworm Moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Vaccinium is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Frequently grows with

Across 189 U.S. vegetation-survey plots that recorded Elliott's Blueberry, these catalog species turned up most often in the same plot — a real field co-occurrence signal, not a planting prescription.

Sweetgum · 74% Muscadine · 72% Blackgum · 70% American Holly · 58% Red Maple · 57% Water Oak · 57% Loblolly Pine · 56% Eastern Poison Ivy · 56%
"%" = share of this plant's plots that also held the species. From sPlotOpen → (Sabatini et al. 2021, CC BY 4.0) — open vegetation plots: wild community composition, not garden design.
How we know this (3) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Mature width Derived

For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).

Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.

Allometric basis: Jucker et al. 2022 (Tallo); Pretzsch et al. 2015; McPherson et al. 2016 (USDA Urban Tree DB).
Flower colour Derived

McKenzie et al. assigned each species a flower colour with a GPT-4V vision model over iNaturalist photos. We use the confident tier plus a separately-labelled lower-confidence top-up (mostly inconspicuous green/brown flowers), and render it as a small tint — never as an asserted fact, and kept out of the written synopsis.

Honest limits: AI image inference (~87% expert agreement on the confident tier); a decorative, confidence-tiered indicator, not a measured trait.

McKenzie, P., Berardi, A.E., Hopkins, R. (2025). flower_color_phenology (MIT).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (30) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[18] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[19] Wetland indicator — USACE National Wetland Plant List (2022)
[21] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[23] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[25] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[28] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[29] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

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