ERICACEAE 227 



Distribution. — The Creeping Wintergreen, a shrub of 

 moist, sandy woods, ranges from Manitoba to Minnesota and 

 south to Georgia and Tennessee. Its presence in Illinois is 

 known only from one reported occurrence along the shore of 

 Lake Michigan north of Chicago. It probably has been exter- 

 minated. 



ARCTOSTAPHYLOS Adanson 

 The Bearberries Kinnikinnick 



The bearberries are shrubs or small trees with alternate, 

 thick, evergreen leaves and perfect flowers, which are borne 

 in terminal racemes provided with small bracts. The flowers 

 have 5 persistent sepals and an urn-shaped corolla with 4 or 5 

 recurved lobes. The 8 to 10 stamens have filaments ^vhich are 

 swollen and hairy at the base. The ovary is 4- to 10-celled 

 and develops into a drupelike fruit with a 1- to 8-seeded stone, 

 or w^ith seeds more or less separate. 



Some 40 species of bearberries are known, almost all of them 

 inhabitants of western North America. The following, native 

 in Illinois, is widely distributed in the northern hemisphere. 



ARCTOSTAPHYLOS UVA-URSI (Linnaeus) Sprengel 

 Bearberry Kinnikinnick 



The Bearberry, fig. 59, is a trailing shrub with more or less 

 spreading or upright branches 4 to 16 inches long which, when 

 trailing, often root at the nodes. They are covered by reddish- 

 brown, exfoliating bark, and the branchlets are white-tomentose 

 or, often, smooth by the end of the season. The leaves are 

 evergreen, leathery, spatulate to broadly ovate, and V^ to I14 

 inches long by i/g to a little more than Yl inch wide. The blade 

 is rounded at the apex and narrowed at the base, and the leaf 

 margin is entire, though sometimes ciliate. The surface is 

 smooth above, or sometimes pubescent on the midrib toward 

 the base, and smooth beneath except on the midrib. The petioles 

 are short and often pubescent. 



The inflorescence consists of axillary and terminal clusters 

 of 1 to 6 flowers, which stand on short, reflexed peduncles. 

 The white flowers with purplish-pink corolla lobes bloom in 

 May and early June and develop in July and August into 



