Description :

• Shrubs up to 4 m tall
• Leaves alternate, broad, flat, 40-60 X 10-20 mm
• Flowers in small axillary racemes; bract much reduced, on main axis; bracteoles 2, much reduced
• Calyx 4- or 5-lobed; tube short, adnate to ovary
• Corolla 4- or 5-lobed, deciduous
• Stamens 10, free; filaments broadening towards base, pilose; anthers dorsifixed near apex, with 2 small dorsal appendages, thecae produced into 2 long tubes opening by terminal pores; pollen shed as tetrads
• Ovary half-inferior, 4- or 5-locular or falsely 10-locular owing to intrusion of partitions from placenta, with few to numerous ovules per locule; style slender, included; stigma simple or subcapitate
• Fruit a berry ± the size of a small pea, crowned with persistent calyx lobes; seeds ellipsoid, with thick alveolate testa
• x = 12 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Vaccinium L.
  • Linnaeus: 349 (1753)
  • Brown: 1 (1905) under Vacciniaceae
  • Verdoorn: 92 (1954)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 450, cosmopolitan, mainly in South America and southeast Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Vaccinium exul Bolus, Drakensberg escarpment of Mpumalanga