Angiosperms (Flowering Plants) • Earth.com

Maleberry

(Lyonia ligustrina)

galery
en

Description

Lyonia ligustrina is a species of flowering plant in the family Ericaceae known by the common names maleberry and he-huckleberry. It is native to the eastern United States from Maine to Florida and west to Texas and Oklahoma. This shrub grows up to 4 meters tall. It has long rhizomes which may send up new stems up to 4 meters apart. The stems have longitudinally furrowed bark. The leaves may be deciduous or not, depending on variety. They are oval in shape and up to 10.5 centimeters long by 5 wide. The small flowers are white. The fruit is a small, dry capsule. This is a common plant in several types of habitat, including savanna, bog, forest, pocosin, and swamp. It often occurs in ecotones. It can grow in wet and dry habitat types. It is tolerant of fire, budding and sending up shoots from its rhizome if aboveground parts are burned away. It grows in fire-prone habitat types, such as pine barrens. The plant gets its common names from the fact that it produces hard, dry capsules instead of fleshy, juicy, edible fruits like other Ericaceae species such as huckleberries and blueberries. Lyonia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. There are about 35 species native to Asia and North America. These are shrubs and trees, deciduous or evergreen. Some have rhizomes. The leaves are spirally arranged and the inflorescences grow in the leaf axils. The flowers are usually white, sometimes red. The fruit is a capsule

Taxonomic tree:

Domain:
Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order:Ericales
Family:Ericaceae
Genus:Lyonia
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