Arctous alpina (syn. Arctostaphylos alpina), the alpine bearberry, mountain bearberry or black bearberry, is a dwarf shrub in the heather family Ericaceae. The basionym of this species is Arbutus alpina .
Description
Arctous alpina is a
prostrate shrub usually less than high with a woody stem and straggling branches. The leaves are alternate and wither in the autumn but remain on the plant for another year. The leaves are stalked and are oval with serrated margins and a network of veins. They often turn red to scarlet in autumn. The flowers are in groups of two to five, white or pink and urn-shaped and about long. They have five sepals, five fused petals with five small projecting lobes, ten stamens and a single carpel. The fruits are spherical, long, initially green, then red and finally glossy black and succulent when ripe. This plant flowers in June.
[ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Native Plant Information Network—NPIN: Arctostaphylos alpina (Alpine bearberry). Accessed 2013-02-02]
Distribution and habitat
Arctous alpina has a
Subarctic distribution. It is found at high latitudes, from
Scotland east across
Scandinavia,
Russia,
Alaska,
Northern Canada and
Greenland. Its southern limits in Europe are the
Pyrenees and the
Alps, in Asia, the
Altay Mountains and
Mongolia, and in North America,
British Columbia in the west, and
Maine and
New Hampshire in the east.
Its natural habitat is moorland, dry forests with
birch and
pine and hummocks covered in moss at the edges of bogs.
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Ecology
Arctous alpina forms a Symbiosis relationship life with fungi which supply it with nutrients such as phosphorus. The berries are appreciated by birds.[
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