A creeping evergreen mat with leathery spoon-shaped leaves and dry red berries, on gravelly upland heath
Bearberry — Arctostaphylos uva-ursi.
Nature · Shrubs
Bearberry
Native · evergreen mat · flowers spring · dry upland heath, mostly Scotland
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi — Ericaceae
Bearberry is a mat-forming evergreen of dry, gravelly upland heath and moor, a boreal-montane plant whose British stronghold is the Scottish Highlands. In England it is scarce, and at its outposts it counts as a rare relict of a colder age. Its name, in both Greek and Latin, means 'bear's grape'.
How to spot them
- ▸Long, prostrate, rooting woody stems forming mats, with leathery, evergreen, spoon-shaped leaves with rounded tips
- ▸Leaves shiny above, with a netted vein pattern, and without the black glands of cowberry
- ▸Small pink-white urn-shaped flowers in short clusters in spring
- ▸Bright red berries in late summer and autumn, dry and mealy
- ▸Look-alikes: cowberry has black glands under its leaves and is evergreen with red berries too; bearberry has a netted vein pattern, forms flat mats and grows on drier, gravelly ground
How to know it
Both its Greek genus name and its Latin species name translate as 'bear's grape'
Bearberry — Arctostaphylos uva-ursi.
It is recorded as a rare plant in seven vice-counties, including Northumberland, Cumbria and Orkney, and is scarce in England
Bearberry — a northern relict.
Its characteristic National Vegetation Classification community is a heath dominated by heather, and it can be lost when moors are burned
Bearberry — H16 heath.
A boreal-montane plant found from near sea level in western Scotland and Ireland to about 900 metres on Highland moors
Bearberry.
Some Scottish Borders relict populations survive on low tracks in moorland managed for sheep and grouse
Bearberry.
Quick-fire facts
- •Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, family Ericaceae; the genus comes from Greek arktos, bear, and staphyle, grape, and the species name is the Latin equivalent
- •A woody undershrub of dry upland heaths and moorland, often over well-drained gravelly or rocky ground, at up to about 915 m (BSBI)
- •On the rare plant registers of seven vice-counties, mainly in northern Britain and Scotland, and uncommon in England (BSBI)
- •A circumpolar boreal-montane plant; GB Red List status Least Concern (BSBI)
- •Range has been stable since the 1962 Atlas but with losses before 1930 and local declines from moor-burning (BSBI)
- •In Ireland, reduced winter grazing has let heather overgrow it (BSBI)
- •Its characteristic community is NVC H16, heather–bearberry heath
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Sources
- Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (L.) Spreng. (Bearberry)