Description
Gaultheria shallon is 0.2 to 5 metres (0.66 to 16 ft) tall, sprawling to erect. Evergreen, its thick, tough, egg-shaped leaves are shiny and dark green on the upper surface, and rough and lighter green on the lower. Each finely and sharply serrate leaf is 5 to 10 centimetres (2.0 to 3.9 in) long. The inflorescence consists of a bra raceme, one-sided, with 5 to 15 flowers at the ends of branches. Each flower is composed of a deeply five-parted glandular-haired calyx and an urn-shaped pink to white, glandular to hairy, five-lobed corolla, 7 to 10 millimetres (0.28 to 0.39 in) long. The reddish to blue, rough-surfaced, hairy, nearly spherical fruit is 6 to 10 millimetres (0.24 to 0.39 in) in diameter.
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