Vaccinium cespitosum

Dwarf bilberry

Family: Ericaceae · Type: shrub · Native

Dwarf bilberry is a California native shrub found in northwestern California (excluding North Coast Ranges Interior), the high Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada, Central Coast, San Francisco Bay Area, and Warner Mountains in wet meadow margins and mountain slopes at elevations up to 3,400 meters. Flowering from May to July, this plant produces white to pink flowers less than 6 millimeters long in narrow urn-shaped clusters. Growing as a low shrub with prostrate to erect stems up to 50 centimeters tall, it has rhizomes and generally green, hairy twigs. Its deciduous leaves are 1 to 3 centimeters long, oblong to elliptic with minutely serrated edges and glandular undersides. The fruit is blue-glaucous and less than 9 millimeters wide.

Habitat: Margins of wet meadows, mountain slopes

Bloom period: May-Jul

Elevation: < 3400 m

Bioregions: NW (exc NCoRI), CaRH, SNH, CCo, SnFrB, Wrn

California counties: Plumas, Alpine, Fresno, Humboldt, El Dorado, Tulare, Tuolumne, Inyo, Siskiyou, San Mateo, Sierra, Modoc, Madera, Nevada, Mono, Trinity, Butte, Lassen, Mariposa, Shasta, Sonoma, Del Norte, Marin, Tehama, Placer, Amador

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.