BOX HUCKLEBERRY 



Gaylussacia brachycera (Michaux) Gray 



During his explorations of the eastern United States about 1730 

 the famous French botanist, Andre Michaux, discovered a blueberry- 

 like plant which he named Vaccinium brachycerum. In his Flora, pub- 

 lished after his death, the locality was inaccurately stated as "in 

 Virginia, circa Winchester," and for many years the plant was lost 

 to science. Other early finds of it, by Pursh and Kin, were also lost 

 sight of, and Asa Gray, when making a study of this group of plants, 

 was unable to locate any living specimens. Nearly fifty years after 

 the original discovery, however, a colony of it was found in Penn- 

 sylvania by Spencer F. Baird, and his friendship with Gray, which 

 sprang up as a result of their correspondence about the plant, led to 

 his selection later as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. For 

 many years this colony, situated near New Bloomfield, Pennsyl- 

 vania, was the only one known, but during the past ten years, through 

 the activities of Dr. Frederick V. Coville, Dr. Edgar T. Wherry, and 

 others, the plant has been discovered in several other localities. 



In addition to the charm of the plant, with its delicate pink flowers 

 in early spring, its brilliant blue berries in midsummer, and its shin- 

 ing evergreen foliage the rest of the year, this species possesses great 

 scientific interest, in that it forms colonies through its spread by 

 rootstocks, so that, as shown by Dr. Coville, a patch whose area is 

 measured in acres may consist of a single plant, thousands of years old. 

 In the mountains of southern West Virginia, where it reaches its 



