Gaylussacia brachycera

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Gaylussacia brachycera
Gaylussacia brachycera, fruiting

Gaylussacia brachycera, fruiting

Systematics
Class : Bedecktsamer (Magnoliopsida)
Asterids
Order : Heather-like (Ericales)
Family : Heather family (Ericaceae)
Genre : Gaylussacia
Type : Gaylussacia brachycera
Scientific name
Gaylussacia brachycera
( Michx. ) A. Gray 1846

Gaylussacia brachycera ( English box huckleberry, box-leaved whortleberry , German  Buchsblättrige Huckleberry ) is a low shrub from the heather familyfrom North America. It is related to blueberries and other huckleberries . It is home to the east-central United States ( Pennsylvania , Delaware , Maryland , Virginia , West Virginia , North Carolina , Kentucky, and Tennessee ).

Gaylussacia brachycera can easily be distinguished from the other species of the genus by their leaves: they are very similar to those of the boxwood (hence the common name); the resin stains typical of Huckleberries are missing. Like its relatives, it bears white urn-shaped flowers in early summer which, after pollination, produce blue, edible berries in late summer. It is found predominantly in the Appalachian Mountains ; many of the locations there were known to the indigenous people who collected and ate the berries before botanists became aware of them in the 1920s.

As a relic species of the last glacial period , G. brachycera was almost extinct. It is self-incompatible and occurs in isolated stands that reproduce clonally through spreading roots. A population in Pennsylvania was once estimated to be 13,000 years old; more recent estimates put a maximum age of 8,000 years, which would make it the oldest wood east of the Rocky Mountains . Another stock in Pennsylvania, approximately 1,300 years old, has been placed under protection in the Hoverter and Sholl Box Huckleberry Natural Area .

According to the Nature Conservancy in the USA, the species was endangered in 2012 (“G3”).

description

Gaylussacia brachycera is a low shrub 6 in (approx. 150 mm) to 8 in (approx. 200 mm) in height. Its leaves are similar to those of the boxwood (hence the common name). They are about 1 in (about 30 mm) long and oval, shiny and finely toothed, and turn red in winter. The evergreen leaves without resin spots are very different from those of other Gaylussacia species. G. brachycera flowers in May and June. The flowers are urn-shaped and white, occasionally purple in color. As with other huckleberries, they seem to arise as a cluster of the leaf axil . The fruits, which appear in July and August, are blue berries on a short flower stalk .

Taxonomy

Gaylussacia brachycera was first collected near Winchester (Virginia) (probably in present-day West Virginia ) in 1796 and described by the botanist André Michaux . Michaux named the species in his Flora Boreali-Americana , which appeared in 1803, Vaccinium brachycerum . Matthias Kinn (around 1800) and Frederick Traugott Pursh (1805) also collected evidence in West Virginia. RA Salisbury named the species in 1805 V. buxifolium , which became the common name for the next 40 years; the common name "box-leaved whortle-berry" ( German  box tree -leaved blue or black berry ) was common at that time.

No further evidence was collected until 1845 when Spencer Baird , a professor at Dickinson College , discovered an inventory near New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania . The species was renamed from Asa Gray to G. brachycera in 1846 based on Baird's evidence. ( Gaylussacia was not recognized as a separate genus until 1819.) The discovery came about through the friendship between Gray and Baird, which eventually led to the latter being appointed director of the Smithsonian Institution .

In 1933, John Kunkel Small assigned the species to a monospecific genus as Buxella brachycera . However, this was not generally accepted and was rejected by other authors for reasons of nomenclature and "phyletic deficiency". More recent research from 2002 suggested that the monophyly of G. brachycera is "ambiguous" with the rest of the genus Gaylussacia , and further analysis of the genus Vaccinium could reveal that G. brachycera is again included in this.

Synonyms

The Plant List , a joint venture between the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) and the Missouri Botanical Garden , lists the following synonyms:

  • Vaccinium brachycerum Michx. 1803
  • Vaccinium buxifolium Salisb.
  • Buxella brachycera Small
  • Adnaria brachycera (Torr. & A.Gray) Kuntze
  • Decamerium brachycerum (Michx.) Ashe

distribution and habitat

About 100 individual occurrences of Gaylussacia brachycera are documented in the scientific literature. Until Baird's collection in 1845, the locations of the species in West Virginia were lost to science, and for a long time the location was the only known one in Pennsylvania. Evidence of G. brachycera was finally brought in 1870 in Delaware by William M. Canby.

Frederick V. Coville gained attention in 1919 for a contribution to the endangered species in the journal Science . While examining the species for horticultural use , he found only two specimens of herbarium , those of Baird and Canby. (Coville was apparently unknown to the evidence from Kinn from West Virginia, which is in the Muhlenberg Herbarium.) During a tour of the site in New Bloomfield in 1918, he discovered that the entire population, with the exception of one area separated by cultivation, was connected via the roots and that there were no saplings outside the limits of the stand. Coville concluded that the plant is self-incompatible and that it reproduces by spreading the roots. After a truckload of Gaylussacia brachycera for commercial propagation in a tree nursery was removed from the New Bloomfield stock in 1918 , Coville was particularly concerned about the preservation of the species, as the location was the only known place at the time. (It was placed under protection by the state as the Hoverter and Sholl Box Huckleberry Natural Area in 1929. ) Edgar T. Wherry , however, was able to locate the holdings believed to be lost in Delaware in 1919 and send some specimens to Pennsylvania for crossbreeding .

The report of this generated considerable interest in the species. Other populations were found in Pennsylvania and Delaware, one in Maryland , several in Virginia , three in Tennessee (1920–1930), two in Kentucky (1927–1932), and many in West Virginia (1921). When he summarized these discoveries in 1932, Wherry pointed out that many of the stocks were already known to the locals who gathered the berries to eat, but names such as "juniper-berry" ( German  juniper berry ), "ground-huckleberry" ( German  Boden-Huckleberry ) and "bear-huckleberry" ( German  Bären-Huckleberry ) used. He called on the scientific community to intensify efforts to use such local knowledge for plant geography . Most recently (2003) a hold was discovered in Durham County, North Carolina , the first record for the state.

Most of the evidence of Gaylussacia brachycera has been found in the Appalachian Mountains; they range from central Pennsylvania in the north to eastern Tennessee in the south. The evidence from Maryland and Delaware, however, comes from the Atlantic coastal plain , and the only site from North Carolina is in the Piedmont . The point-like distribution of the species suggests that it was once more widespread across North America, but was burnt in most places by glacier advances and could only survive where it escaped the ice in protected areas.

ecology

Gaylussacia brachycera prefers dry, acidic soils, etc. a. the undergrowth of forests, and partial shade. The sites on wooded slopes are more directed to the north; however, the location at New Bloomfield faces west. At one of the localities in Delaware, a population has spread to the damp edge of a bog, but most of it grows on a dry, sandy slope.

The species is self-incompatible, so that individual plants cannot reproduce sexually by themselves. Instead, they form stands that reproduce vegetatively via their root runners. A population of G. brachycera at Losh Run, Pennsylvania was estimated to be 6,500 ft (1,980 m) in length at the time of its discovery. If this stock had grown from a seed on the Juniata River through clonal growth at a rate of six inches per year, it would be 13,000 years old, making it the oldest living organism in the United States and the second oldest in the world, second only to Lomatia tasmanica . However, this seems too generous an estimate for climatic reasons. By the time the site was covered by a boreal coniferous forest, it may have been too cold for G. brachycera to survive ; the forest currently growing there did not appear there until 8,000 years ago. This age would also make the stock the oldest wood in North America east of the Rocky Mountains . Recent studies have attempted to determine whether the reproduction was actually completely clonal (as the stock was badly damaged by a forest fire in 1963 and road construction in the 1970s). Two genotypes were found in samples taken from the herd, but they are believed to have arisen through somatic mutation rather than sexual reproduction. The destruction of 80 percent of the existing building by the fire and road construction unfortunately makes it impossible to give a definitive answer to the question.

The bead of the moth Dichomeris juncidella was eating observed on the leaves. The berries are eaten by turkeys and collar grouse. They have long been collected for eating by people in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Reverend Frederick W. Gray, who documented many stocks in West Virginia in the 1920s, first became interested in the plant when he was served "Juniper" pie, "Juniper" being the local name for the box-leaved huckleberry. He found it tasteless, however.

use

With the participation of the United States Department of Agriculture , efforts to establish G. brachycera as a ground cover in landscaping are well on the way. The species is commercially available from at least one source, but it is difficult to propagate, making it unprofitable for many nurseries. In New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania, the box-leaved huckleberry became part of the New Year's festivities , where a replica of the paper mache shrub is dropped in place of a Times Square ball to mark the start of the New Year.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gaylussacia brachycera . Biota of North America Program. Retrieved April 29, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c d Gaylussacia brachycera (box huckleberry): NPIN . The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (TWC). 2007. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c d Will Cook: Box Huckleberry ( Gaylussacia brachycera ) . 2013. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b c d e Ad Crable: Meet the world's oldest - and hardest working - plant . In: Lancaster New Era , Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., August 20, 1999. 
  5. ↑ a b Irina Kadis: CPC plant profile for Gaylussacia brachycera . Center for Plant Conservation. March 4, 2010. Archived from the original on June 5, 2008. Retrieved June 22, 2008.
  6. ^ A b Charles Fergus, Rusty Rae: Natural Pennsylvania: Exploring the State Forest Natural Areas . Stackpole Books, January 2002, ISBN 978-0-8117-2038-0 , p. 48 (accessed June 22, 2008).
  7. ^ Gaylussacia brachycera (Michaux) A. Gray, 1846: Box huckleberry . In: Flora of North America . Retrieved April 29, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b c d e Hazel Smith, Don Smith: The box huckleberry, Gaylussacia brachycera . In: Castanea . 36, No. 2, June 1971, pp. 81-89.
  9. ↑ a b c d Edgar T. Wherry : The box huckleberry as an illustration of the need for fieldwork . In: Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club . 61, No. 2, February 1934, pp. 81-84. doi : 10.2307 / 2480787 .
  10. ^ John Sims : Vaccinium buxifolium. Box-Leaved Whortle Berry. . In: Stephen Couchman (Ed.): Curtis's Botanical Magazine . 24, London, 1806, p. 928.
  11. ↑ a b c Margaret Pooler, Rob Nicholson, Andrew Vandegrift: Clonal fidelity in large colonies of Gaylussacia brachycera Gray (box huckleberry) assessed by DNA fingerprinting . In: Northeastern Naturalist . 15, No. 1, 2008, pp. 67-74. doi : 10.1656 / 1092-6194 (2008) 15 [67: CFILCO] 2.0.CO; 2 .
  12. ↑ W. Benson Kirkman, James R. Ballington: Creeping blueberries (Ericaceae: Vaccinium sect. Herpothamnus ) - a new look at V. crassifolium including V. sempervirens . In: Systematic Botany . 15, No. 4, 1990, pp. 679-699. doi : 10.2307 / 2419164 .
  13. ^ A b c d e Frederick V. Coville : The threatened extinction of the box huckleberry, Gaylussacia brachycera . In: Science . 50, No. 1280, July 11, 1919, pp. 30-34. doi : 10.1126 / science.50.1280.30 .
  14. ^ Wendell H. Camp: Studies in the Ericales: a review of the North American Gaylussacieae; with remarks on the origin and migration of the group . In: Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club . 68, No. 8, November 1941, pp. 531-551. doi : 10.2307 / 2481455 .
  15. ↑ Jennifer Whitehead Floyd: Phylogenetic and biogeographic patterns in Gaylussacia (Ericaceae) based on morphological, nuclear DNA, and chloroplast DNA variation . In: Systematic Botany . 27, No. 1, 2002, pp. 99-115. doi : 10.1043 / 0363-6445-27.1.99 .
  16. ↑ Gaylussacia brachycera (Michx.) Torr. & A.Gray . The Plant List. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  17. ↑ a b William Cullina: Native Trees, Shrubs & Vines . Houghton Mifflin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-618-09858-5 , p. 136.
  18. ^ Edgar T. Wherry: Box-huckleberry as the oldest living protoplasm . In: Castanea . 37, No. 2, June 1972, pp. 94-95.
  19. ↑ a b Rob Nicholson: Little Big Plant, Box Huckleberry ( Gaylussacia brachycera ) . In: Arnoldia . 68, No. 3, 2011, pp. 11-18.
  20. ^ A b Edward W. Claypole: Note on a relic of the native flora of Pennsylvania, surviving in Perry County . In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society . 21, No. 114, March 1883, pp. 226-230.
  21. ↑ Maurice G. Brooks, Weldon Boone, Frank Gilbert, HA Davis, Aaron J. Sharp: Southern Appalachian botany: some historical reflections . In: Castanea . 51, No. 4, December 1986, pp. 233-238.
  22. ↑ Margaret Pooler, Ruth Dix, Robert Griesbach: Recovery, propagation, and evaluation of the box huckleberry, Gaylussacia brachycera (Michx.) Gray . In: HortScience . 38, No. 5, August 2003, p. 668.
  23. ↑ Have a 'berry' good New Year . In: Daily Union , Montgomery Communications, Inc., December 30, 1994. 

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