20 seeds Empetrum nigrum.
Empetrum nigrum, crowberry, black crowberry, or, in western Alaska, blackberry, is a flowering plant species in the heather family Ericaceae with a circumboreal distribution.
Empetrum nigrum is a shrub 25-50 cm high, strongly branched, with a cushion-shaped crown. Leaves are evergreen, narrow, linear, less than 1 cm long, with edges turned down, dark green above, with dense red pubescence below. Female flowers often contain sterile stamens (staminodes); 5 (less often 4) bracts, 3 scaly sepals, sometimes pinkish at the base, up to 1.6 mm long, 1.2 mm wide, 3 pinkish or dark red petals with fairly well-defined marigolds, superior ovary, stellate stigmas, six - nine-bladed. Male flowers have the same perianth and 3 stamens with long filaments (2 times longer than the petals). Blooms in May - June. Fruits are edible, globular, black, ripen in September, preserved in winter. Crowberry is dioecious, so the berries are not formed on all plants, they are watery and tasteless.
The plant is pollinated by butterflies, flies and bees; quite demanding on light, grows on fresh and moist soils, poorly aerated, poor in mineral nitrogen; indifferent to the reaction of the soil.
Crowberry resembles lingonberry berry in many features. It also grows in clumps. Shoots creeping along the ground form adventitious roots, as a result of which the curtain gradually grows and occupies an ever larger area. And like lingonberry shiksha cannot do without symbiosis with mushrooms, which supply it with mineral elements, and in return receive products of photosynthesis.
It is used as a ground cover plant in various garden compositions. Empetrum nigrum (crowberry, black crowberry, blackberry) can be planted in a flat rockery. You can also try it in combination with perennial flowers, for which a branchy and spreading "herringbone" will serve as a thick dark green background.
USDA Hardiness Zone (°F): 2 (-50 to -40 °F)