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Vaccinium sikkimense
Sikkim Blueberry is a small, rigid, evergreen shrub from the high Himalaya and western China, reaching about 1 metre, and is grown as a hardy ornamental. It is rare in cultivation, mostly seen in public gardens in Great Britain.
Vaccinium sikkimense is an Asian species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae. It was first described by Charles Baron Clarke in 1882 and may only be a dwarf alpine form of Vaccinium glaucoalbum.
The species was collected by several of the early pioneers of botanical collecting in the Himalayas, including George Forrest, Joseph Rock and Frank Kingdon-Ward. Of these, only Kingdon-Ward appears to have introduced living material to cultivation, in 1931 and 1953. It was collected again and brought into cultivation in 1981, by Tony Schilling. A hardy ornamental shrub, it remains rare in cultivation, although grown in public gardens in several parts of Great Britain.
Vaccinium sikkimense is distributed from the eastern Himalayas, through northeast Nepal and southeast Tibet into western South Central China and northwest Myanmar (Burma). It has not been recorded from either Bhutan or Arunachal Pradesh, giving it a disjunct distribution. It was originally collected at an altitude of 4,000 m (13,000 ft), and was later collected at around 3,600 m (11,800 ft) in open woodland.
Malea pilosa · Vaccinium adenochaetum · Lowbush blueberry · Farkleberry · Caucasian Whortleberry · Vaccinium bissei · Vaccinium boninense · Northern blueberry · Sea bilberry · New Jersey blueberry · Ohelo kau la'au · East Polynesian Blueberry
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Vaccinium sikkimense 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
