Ordinarily, when mention is made of the world’s oldest living plants, we think of the California sequoias.
Or we may recall that some bryologists maintain that peat moss plants growing year after year from the top and dying off at the bottom may be older than the redwoods.
Some students of the lower plants point out that many one-celled organisms, commonly classified as plants, and reproducing by simple division, might be entitled to this honor.
Some geneticists point out that plants that are clones, like our tawny daylily, where all existing plants throughout the world are of necessity part of the one original plant, should be considered.
There is, however, still another plant that presents a good case for this title.
Early Records Of The Box Huckleberry
Here are the early records of the Box Huckleberry:
- 1796 – Andre Michaux collected near Winchester, Va., evergreen huckleberry with box-like leaves, which he named Vaccinium brachycerum.
- 1803 – his published description of the plant states that it was collected near Winchester, but the actual specimen preserved in his herbarium at Paris is labeled “Warm Springs.”
His meticulously kept journal does not mention finding the plant at Winchester, nor does it record any trip to Warm Springs, so we are not certain where the original specimen came from.
- 1800 – The next record of the plant is a collection made by Mathias Kin at “Krien Preyer,” on the old Midland Trail, in sight of present U. S. Highway 60, West Virginia,
- 1805 – Frederick Pursh found it “near Winchester and Sweet Springs in western Virginia,” probably the same locality as Michaux’s.
After these three records, the species was lost to science for almost 50 years.
Asa Gray made several trips into the southern Appalachians, hoping to rediscover the plant, but in vain.
Rediscovery
In 1846, Spencer F. Baird most unexpectedly electrified the botanical world by finding the plant in a region where no one ever looked for it, along the Juniata River, near New Bloomfield, Pa.
This colony was visited in:
- 1860 by Dr. Joseph Carson
- 1861 by W. W. Winter, Jr.
- 1862 and 1869 by T. C. Porter and A. P. Garber
- 1876 by A. P. Garber again
- 1889 by Dr. A. Ziegler
- 1905 by B. H. Smith
- 1918 by Dr. Frederick V. Coville and Harlan P. Kelsey
- 1919 by Dr. John K. Small
- 1920 by H. W. Trudell and J. K., G. K., and J. W. Small
- 1932 by Harry J. Lupfer
All of whom preserved botanical vouchers.
Other Box Huckleberry Rediscoveries
- 1869 – Meanwhile, W. M. Canby found it on a small stand on a dry sandy bank under mountain laurel in pinewoods along the shores of the Indian River, 1 and 1/2 miles below Millsboro, Del., where he collected it again in 1870 and 1876.
- 1875 and 1876 – This colony was visited these years by A. Commons, but it was lost.
- 1916 – Canby and Dr. C. S. Sargent tried for two days to rediscover it.
- 1918 – Coville sent a botanist expressly to find it again, but also in vain. The conclusion reached was that the colony had been exterminated.
- 1919 – Dr. Edger T. Wherry finally succeeded in relocating it. The patch was only 20 feet square and is today the only known Delaware locality, studied in 1920 by the Smalls and in 1926 by Dr. Rodney H. True.
Other Places Of Discovery
While this was happening in Delaware, botanists elsewhere had not relented in their search.
- 1884 – Howard Shriver recorded it from near Wytheville, Va.
- 1901 – Mr. and Mrs. E. S. Steele found it at 3500 ft. altitude on Stony Man Mountain “and vicinity,” near Luray, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
More recently, it has turned up at Fries, and A. B. Massey has seen it on the gravelly north slopes of Price’s Mountain, three miles south of Blacksburg.
Discovery Of A Second Locality
However, these last few discoveries were not publicized, and attention shifted to Pennsylvania, where H. A. Ward discovered a second locality in mountainslope woods 5 miles north of Duncannon, on the southern side of Losh Run in 1920.
This locality is about 12 miles east of the New Bloomfield stand and 1 and 1/4 miles above Amity Hall on the east bank of the Juniata.
There are four separate colonies, each on the northern side of a ravine, two of which are about a mile long and 500′ feet wide.
In 1921, Ward found another half-mile-long stand about 1 and 1/2 miles northeast of upper Losh Run.
These new localities were excitedly studied in:
- 1920 by Trudell, Wherry, the Smalls, O. E. Jennings, and J. W. Harshberger;
- 1926 by Roscoe C. North and the writer, and
- 1932 again by North.
In this area, the plant is known to natives as “Jerusalem huckleberry.” The rather tart fruit is gathered for making jellies and jams.
The Start Of Eastern States’ Search
The Pennsylvania discoveries received wide publicity, and botanists all over the eastern states began searching anew for this plant.
- 1910 – a colony was uncovered near Pasadena, Md., and in 1912 near Pulaski, Va.
- 1921 – Coville and C. C. Plitt found it at the head of the Mogothy River, about 12 miles southeast of Baltimore. Small studied this colony later in the same year, and Prof. R. F. Griggs visited it several times with his students.
- 1921 – it was found by Rev. F. W. Gray near Dorr and Cass, W. Va. Here, the plant is known to natives as “juniper,” and advertisements in local papers brought to light about 75 more colonies in that state, where it exists mostly as a groundcover under rhododendrons and white pines.
It was collected at Roncevert by W. H. Leach, and at Lewisburg, by M. S. Franklin. The West Virginia colonies vary from a few square feet to 300 acres.
A patch found by Wherry near Hollywood is 25 acres in extent.
The West Virginia University Botanical Expeditions in 1926 and 1928 observed the plant near the mouth of Second Creek on the Henderson Leach farm and in 1931 at Chocolate Drop, Greenbrier County localities.
Other Localities
This gave us localities in 5 states, but two more were yet to join the select few.
- 1923 – it was discovered forming large, almost circular, beds in woods three miles southwest of Allardt, Tenn., by Prof. S. H. Essary.
- 1930 – Stanley Cain collected it along the White Oak River near Rugby, and H. M. Jennison in sandy soil among rocks on the bank of Clear Fork, Cumberland River, just north of Rugby. Here the plant is called “bear huckleberry.” The following year Jennison, Essary, A. J. Sharp, and J. K. Underwood revisited the Allardt colony.
- 1932 – Miss E. Lucy Braun found it growing plentifully 2 and 1/2 miles west of Cumberland Falls Station, Ky., and called it “ground huckleberry.” It had previously been reported from Kentucky by Kinney, who collected in Boyle and Mercer Counties from 1880 to 1884.
Estimated Age Of The Box Huckleberry
The amazing feature about the box huckleberry is that most of the “colonies” are not groups of many individual plants but consist of a single plant with many upright, bushy branches connected by a continuous underground rootstock.
Of the four plants in the Losh Run ravines, the two largest are each a mile long. The average annual spread of the plant under favorable conditions is about six inches.
If it started in the middle of the present stand, the plant would be over 5,000 years old, or 2,000 years older than the largest sequoias known.
On the other hand, if it ï started at one end of the ravine and progressed toward the other, as most botanists who have examined the colonies consider far more likely, the age would be far over 10,000 years.
If all four Losh Run plants were initially connected and later separated by the ice movement during the last Ice Age, the age would increase much.
Of course, no one has actually dug up an entire colony to prove that every part is united.
Still, seemingly isolated plants have been dug up and, in every case, attached to neighboring plants by a continuous underground rootstock.
Other Noteworthy Observations
The edges of the colonies are all amazingly sharp. In some cases, the plant cannot cross a streamlet only a few feet wide.
In other cases, the stems project over the top of an undercut bank.
All observers have noted the complete absence of seedlings in and around these Pennsylvania colonies, and this is true also of Delaware and other isolated colonies.
Although fruits are produced in some years, Coville and Wherry have planted thousands of seeds, and not one has ever yielded a strong enough plant to live more than a few months.
Although some of the colonies cover many acres, there isn’t the slightest variation in the morphological characteristics of the members from one end to the other.
Attempts At Breeding Huckleberries
Experimenters in breeding huckleberries long ago found that cross-pollination between two separate plants is essential to produce seeds capable of yielding vigorous plants. This also applies to the box huckleberry.
Wherry cross-pollinated some of them with pollen from the Delaware colony to test the theory of the single-plant nature of Pennsylvania stands.
Hundreds of seeds were obtained, and nearly everyone has yielded a healthy, vigorous plant.
He reports that “its tendency to spread out from a center is exhibited in West Virginia, where the species is quite common.”
In one of the patches, 150′ feet in diameter, the berries on every shoot were unusual in white with pink cheeks like miniature peaches.
It must have started to grow 150 years ago. On one side, it is separated from a patch bearing blueberries by a gap of only 25′ feet.
In a few more years, the two will become intermingled. Elsewhere in the vicinity, other white-berried patches are already admixed with the blue-berried ones.”
Some colonies have all the leaves long and narrow, and some have them nearly round. Others have pear-shaped fruit, and others have apple-shaped.
In some, the shoots are uniformly about six inches tall, while in others, they attain a height of three feet.
Harlan P. Kelsey states that the box huckleberry is the most beautiful native evergreen ground cover for many woodland situations.
Rehder recommends it for his Zone V.
44659 by Harold N. Moldenke