Re: Help!
Tim,
Your plant is Vaccinium dendrocharis, described by the Austrian botanist
Heinrich Handel-Mazzetti from Yunnan province, China in 1925. I looked up
the as yet unpublished Ericaceae information for Flora of China vol. 14,
and apparently it grows in evergreen forests of Abies (fir),
Rhododendron, or Tsuga (hemlock), where it is epiphytic on trees or grows
on rocks; the altitude range is 2300--3500(--3800) m; the distribution is
SE Xizang and W Yunnan provinces, and outside China in Myanmar (= Burma).
The Chinese name for the plant is "shu sheng yue ju."
Hope this helps a bit!
Nick Turland
> This isn't (well, I don't think it is) a Medit-Plants question, even in
> the loosest definition of Medit-Plants, but perhaps some kind and
> scholarly soul can help, all the same.
>
> I have a friend (this is, I swear, an ACTUAL friend, not the 'I have a
> friend...' with the unspeakable problem in the agony columns) who's grown
> from seed some flourishing plants of VACCINIUM DENNOCHARIS. Trouble is,
> he can no longer remember where the seed came from, has no idea where the
> plant itself originates from, hence what conditions it requires (except
> what you might apply to the whole genus), and has no idea what its name
> means (which MIGHT give some clue, at least, as to place of origin or
> cultural requirements or....). I've tried looking it up on the obvious
> sites but can find no references to it at all.
>
> If anybody can help, TIA from me and from him!
> Tim Longville
>
Nick Turland
Flora of China Project, Missouri Botanical Garden,
P.O. Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299, U.S.A.
E-mail: Nicholas.Turland@mobot.org
Phone: +1 314 577 0269 Fax: +1 314 577 9438
MBG web: http://www.mobot.org
FOC web: http://flora.harvard.edu/china/
