Vaccinium japonicum Miq.

A deciduous shrub 2 to 3 ft high, with angular, glabrous young shoots. Leaves ovate to ovate-oblong, pointed, heart-shaped, rounded or tapered at the base, very finely toothed, 1 to 21⁄4 in. long, 1⁄2 to 11⁄4 in. wide, glabrous, very shortly stalked. Flowers solitary in the leaf-axils, each borne in June and July on a very slender stalk 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 in. long. Corolla pink, deeply divided into four narrow lobes which are curled back so as to leave 3⁄8 in. of the long anthers exposed and clustered together in a sort of column; calyx with triangular lobes. Fruits globose, 1⁄4 in. wide, bright red, pendulous.

Native of Japan and Korea; introduced about 1893. It belongs to the same section of Vaccinium as the American V. erythrocarpum, and with it forms a connecting link with the cranberries (Oxycoccus). Both have the shrubby habit of Vaccinium but the corolla is deeply split as in Oxycoccus, the lobes similarly recurved.