James L. Luteyn and Paola Pedraza-Peñalosa
The New York Botanical Garden
VACCINIUM
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Vaccinium is a large, world-wide genus of some 300 species, primarily of the Northern Hemisphere and mostly montane in the tropics. Vaccinium contains about 40 species in the Neotropics, ranging from Mexico to northern Argentina, and eastwards to Guyana and the Caribbean. I have not yet worked out the complete synonomy for the neotropical species, but I do consider Symphysia to be part of a broad concept of Vaccinium. |
VACCINIUM Linnaeus, Sp. pl. 1: 349. 1753; Gen. pl., ed. 5. 166. 1754. Sleumer, Notizbl. Bot. Gart. Berlin-Dahlem 13: 111-140. 1936; Luteyn, Fl. Venez. Guayana 4: 766-769, figs. 618-621. Type: Vaccinium uliginosum L. - Species Plantarum 1: 350. 1753. see Jarvis, Taxon 41: 571 (1992).
Shrubs or rarely trees, often rhizomatous. Leaves alternate, evergreen or deciduous, margins entire or serrate, pinnately veined or rarely plinerved; petioles short. Inflorescences racemose, developing from the buds of the previous season, rarely only 1-2-flowered, the flowers borne in the axils of the bracts or the leaves. Flowers 4-5-merous; aestivation imbricate; pedicels usually bibracteolate; calyx articulated or continuous with the pedicel; hypanthium cylindric to globose; lobes (4-)5, rarely obsolete; corolla carnose to membranous, gamopetalous, cylindric, urceolate, or campanulate, white, greenish, red or yellowish, the lobes 4-5, rarely parted almost to the base; stamens 8 or 10, equal the corolla; filaments distinct, longer than the anthers; anthers lacking awns and with or without dorsal spurs; thecae smooth or papillate; tubules dehiscing by a terminal pore or rarely an oblique cleft; pollen in tetrahedral tetrads and without viscin strands; ovary completely or partly inferior, 4-5(-falsely 10)-locular; stigma small, simple or somewhat capitate. Fruit a 5- to many-seeded berry, crowned by the persistent calyx lobes and capped by the conspicuous nectariferous disc; seeds sometimes with mucilaginous sheath.
Key to Neotropical Species Back to Top
Sorry, there is no treatment for the whole genus; the information herein presented has been modified from Luteyn 1996b and1998, and, Maguire et al. 1978.