Black crowberry

This is a truly northern species, found most often in the tundra and open coniferous forests. In regions dominated by these habitats, it also grows in sphagnum bogs and muskegs. Farther south, around the Gulf of St. Lawrence for instance, it grows only on treeless alpine peaks or along the shore, on sites exposed to the wind, including dunes, rocks, cliffs and capes. It does not grow on mobile dunes, but covers large expanses of fixed dunes. Along with bearberry, it dominates barrens and grows on wooded dunes. In the high mountains in Québec and Labrador, it occurs in subalpine white spruce and fir forests and alpine, dryland tundra and krummholz (stunted-tree) communities. It adapts equally well to acidic rocks and those that are as alkaline as serpentine. Black crowberry fairy-rings have been found. Such crown-shaped formations result when a colony grows outward, but the centre ages and dies. In the tundra, birds gorge on the fruit.