Creeping prostrate evergreen branching shrubs, with alternate 2-ranked oval or ovate small leaves, and solitary axillary small white flowers, on short recurved peduncles. Calyx-tube adnate to the lower half of the ovary, 2-bracted at the base, its limb 4-cleft. Corolla short-campanulate, 4-cleft, its lobes rounded. Stamens 8, included; filaments short, nearly orbicular, roughish; anthers not awned nor prolonged into tubes, each sac 2-cuspidate at the apex and opening by a slit down to the middle. Ovary 4-celled, surrounded by the 8-lobed disk; style short. Berry globose to oval, snow-white, many-seeded, rather mealy. [Greek, snow-born, in allusion to the berries.]

A monotypic genus of North America and Japan.

1. Chiogenes Hispidula (L.) T. & G. Creeping Snowberry. Ivory-Plums

Fig. 3274

Vaccinium hispiduhim L. Sp. Pl. 352. 1753. C. serpyllifolia Salisb. Trans. Hort. Soc. 2: 94. 1814. Chiogenes hispidula T. & G.; Torr. Fl. N. Y. 1: 450. 1843. Chiogenes japonica A. Gray, Syn. Fl. 2: Part 1, 26. 1878.

Branches strigose-pubescent, very slender, 3'-12' long. Leaves coriaceous, persistent, oval, ovate, or slightly obovate, short-petioled, acute at the apex, rounded or narrowed at the base, dark green, glabrous above, entire, sprinkled with appressed stiff brownish hairs beneath and on the revolute margins, 2"-5" long; flowers few, solitary, axillary, nodding, about 2" long, berry aromatic, usually minutely bristly, crowned by the 4 calyx-teeth, becoming almost wholly inferior, about 3" in diameter.

In cold wet woods and bogs, Newfoundland to British Columbia, south to North Carolina and Michigan. Ascends to 5200 ft. in New Hampshire. May-June. Fruit ripe Aug.-Sept. Flavor of sweet birch. Mountain partridge-berry. Running birch. Moxie-berry. Maidenhair-berry.