CCIII.— THE WHORTLEBERRY. 
V accinium Myrtillus Li n n e . 
T HE Sub-Family V accinioide# , which Drude places between the Arbutoide<e and 
the Ericoide<e , and of which Vaccinium is the principal genus, has long been a 
stumbling-block to the systematist. Closely allied in habit, foliage, corolla, stamens, 
and even in the general character of the fruit to such members of the Arbutoide<e as 
the Bearberry ( Arctostaphylos Uva-ursi Sprengel), it differs in having the ovary 
inferior. Structurally this merely means that the floral receptacle instead of being 
to some extent convex, so that the floral leaves succeed one another upon it at 
successively higher levels, is hollowed and adherent to the carpels which are sunk in 
the hollow. Systematists have, however, been slow to grasp the fact that structural 
characters which are of the greatest importance as differentiae in one group of plants 
may be of quite secondary significance in another group. The presence or absence 
of cohesion, for example, between the petals or perianth-leaves may, as among 
Dicotyledons, distinguish major divisions of the Class, whilst in the Liliacete it is 
only of generic importance ; and it is only now that botanists are grasping the 
conclusion that the inferior ovary which separates the Amaryllidace<e from the Liliace 
cannot, in the face of practical identity in all other characters, place them very far 
apart. So too when Sir James Edward Smith wrote of the genus Vaccinium , 
“ It is an insurmountable stumbling-block in the way of all received principles of natural classification,” 
it was simply that he did not comprehend the basis of those principles. Many other 
systematists have felt obliged to separate this genus, and its immediate allies which 
also have the inferior ovary, in a distinct Family or Order. 
The genus Vaccinium , the name of which (used by Pliny) is probably a corruption 
of Baccinium y referring to the numerous berries (Latin bacca ), comprises about a 
hundred species, all natives of the Northern Hemisphere and especially of mountainous 
and marshy areas, where there is a considerable acidity in the humus. They are small 
shrubby plants with scattered, simple, and often evergreen leaves ; drooping, white or 
reddish flowers secreting honey ; four or five sepals and as many petals united in a 
bell ; two whorls of stamens with their anther-chambers prolonged upwards into tubes 
ending in the pores ; and a globose, four- or five-chambered, many-seeded, edible berry. 
There are four British species, the Cranberry (V. Oxycoccus Linne), a trailing 
evergreen, growing in mountain peat-bogs, with revolute leaves, a bright red, rotate, 
four-cleft corolla, no awns to the stamens, and dark red berries ; the Cowberry 
(V. Vitis-Id<ea Linn£), a somewhat similar form, also evergreen, but with a bell-shaped 
corolla, with no awns to the stamens and with obovate leaves ; the Bog Whortleberry 
[V. uliginosum Linn6), deciduous, with cylindrical branches, leaves entire and glaucous 
on their under surfaces, a globose pale pink corolla, awns to the anthers, and a blue 
berry ; and the Whortleberry ( V . Myrtillus Linn£). 
