Who it feeds
The spring bells feed bumble bee queens and the southeastern blueberry bee, a specialist that buzz-pollinates them. It hosts more than 280 caterpillar species, and dozens of birds, from thrushes to towhees, eat the fruit.
Host plant for: Over 280 caterpillar species.
What it does for the place
A four-season shrub: spring nectar, summer fruit, brilliant red fall color, and red winter twigs, all while feeding more insects than nearly any other shrub.
The story
Cultivated blueberries date only to the early 1900s: USDA botanist Frederick Coville began working to domesticate wild highbush blueberries in 1906, Elizabeth White of the New Jersey Pine Barrens offered her family's farm for his research in 1911, they planted the first commercial field in 1912, and the first commercial harvest came in 1916. Before that, blueberries were a wild-harvested food for millennia. It is native to Long Island's bogs and pine barrens.
Worth knowing
- The blue bloom on a berry is a natural wax that protects it.
- Plants can live 50 years or more.
- Buzz pollination: bees vibrate their flight muscles at a specific frequency to shake the pollen loose.
Saving its seed
Ripe: Jul, Aug. Berries fully blue and soft.
Collect: Mash fruit in water; viable seed sinks. Dry on paper.
Sow: Cold-moist stratify in the fridge, then sow in spring. Give it about 90 days of cold-moist stratification. Surface sow; needs light. Seedlings are slow and variable; hardwood cuttings keep the parent's traits.
Cold-stratification days follow Prairie Moon Nursery's January 2026 germination codes where that nursery lists the species; others follow common nursery practice. Protocols vary with seed lot and supplier, so check your seed packet.
Seed saving calendar for your zip code →
Plant it instead of
- Japanese barberry: Forms thorny thickets in the forest understory, raises soil pH, and creates humid microclimates that harbor far more Lyme-carrying ticks than native shrubs do.
- Burning bush (winged euonymus): Still one of the most common landscape shrubs, and one of the most common invaders of Long Island woodlands, where its seedlings carpet the forest floor.
