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Gaultheria
Also called Wintergreen, Aromatic Wintergreens, Snowberries, Wintergreens
Gaultheria is a genus of about 283 shrubs in the heather family, ranging from ground-hugging plants to small trees. Garden favourites include salal and Chilean snowberry, which like acidic, peaty soil that stays moist.
Gaultheria is a genus of about 283 species of shrubs in the family Ericaceae. The name commemorates Jean François Gaultier of Quebec, an honour bestowed by the Scandinavian Pehr Kalm in 1748 and taken up by Carl Linnaeus in his Species Plantarum. These plants are native to Asia, Australasia and North and South America. In the past, the Southern Hemisphere species were often treated as the separate genus Pernettya, but no consistent reliable morphological or genetic differences support recognition of two genera, and they are now united in the single genus Gaultheria.
Several species are grown as ornamental shrubs in gardens, particularly G. mucronata (Pernettya mucronata) from southern Chile and Argentina and G. shallon (salal) from the Pacific Northwest of North America. Many of the smaller species are suitable for rock gardens. Like most other ericaceous plants, Gaultheria species do best in peaty soil that never fully dries out.
Scarlet Snowberry · Gaultheria fragrantissima · Creeping snowberry · Gaultheria insipida · Prickly Heath · Snowberry · Eastern teaberry · Salal
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gaultheria by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
