The last few blogs, I featured some of the members of the heath family of plants including blueberry, huckleberry and swamp sweet bells. Another member of this family and sometimes mistaken for blueberry because of its white bell-like blossoms is the leatherleaf.

Leatherleaf has dark green leathery leaves on arching shoots often growing along the edges of streams and ponds. This shrub’s white bell-like blossoms bloom in a five-inch raceme at the tip of the plant. These flowers do not produce berries; its fruit is a dry woody capsule.

This shrub thrives in bogs and wetlands from the Arctic south to Georgia.