A creeping evergreen with needle-like leaves, tiny inconspicuous flowers and shiny black berries, on windy peat moor and mountain tops
Crowberry — Empetrum nigrum.
Nature · Shrubs
Crowberry
Native · evergreen, creeping to 30 cm · flowers spring · moor, mountain and cliff
Empetrum nigrum — Ericaceae
Crowberry is a creeping evergreen of windy peat moors, mountain summits and northern cliffs, easily mistaken for a heather until it fruits in black berries. Its distribution in Britain lies almost wholly north-west of a line from Whitby to Plymouth. It is one of the few dwarf shrubs whose male and female flowers usually grow on separate plants.
How to spot them
- ▸Prostrate, much-branched evergreen mat with very small, needle-like leaves, spreading over peat and rock
- ▸Tiny, inconspicuous pinkish flowers in the leaf axils in spring, with male and female usually on separate plants
- ▸Shiny black, berry-like fleshy fruits from early July, edible but poor eating
- ▸Windy peaty summits, exposed upland slopes, cliffs and oceanic moorland, mostly in the north and west
- ▸Look-alikes: heather and bell heather have their leaves in rows or whorls and pink-purple flowers; crowberry has solitary axillary flowers and black fruits
How to know it
Its English name suggests its fruit is fit only for crows
Crowberry — 'poor eating, suitable for crows'.
Unusually for a member of the heath family, male and female flowers grow on separate plants in most populations
Crowberry — dioecious.
In Britain it is almost entirely confined to the country north-west of a line from Whitby to Plymouth
Crowberry — an oceanic upland shrub.
A tetraploid form with hermaphrodite flowers is found mainly on Scottish mountains
Crowberry — subsp. hermaphroditum.
The species name means 'black', and the genus name is Greek for 'on the rock'
Crowberry — Empetrum nigrum.
Quick-fire facts
- •Empetrum nigrum, family Ericaceae; nigrum is Latin for black, and Empetrum derives from Greek words meaning 'on rock'
- •Evergreen, prostrate or creeping subshrub to about 30 cm with much-branched stems and needle-like leaves (BSBI)
- •Dioecious in the typical subspecies; a tetraploid subsp. hermaphroditum with hermaphrodite flowers occurs mainly on Scottish mountains (BSBI)
- •In Britain 'almost entirely confined to oceanic moorland heaths and mountain slopes and cliffs, north-west of a line between Whitby and Plymouth' (BSBI)
- •The berries are eatable but poor, suitable for crows, which explains the common name (BSBI)
- •Often grows with cowberry, bilberry, cross-leaved heath and ling on upland heath
- •Berries form from early July, and animals disperse the seeds
Drill it — 6 cards
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Sources
- Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — Empetrum nigrum L., Crowberry