Commemorating Dr Gaultier, 18th century physician and botanist from Quebec.
Evergreen shrubs. Leaves alternate, mostly with saw-toothed margins and short stalks. Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in clusters; male and female plants sometimes separate. Sepals (4)5, often becoming swollen in fruit to produce a berry-like structure. Petals fused and urn or bell-shaped with 5 lobes. Stamens 10, each with 4 awns. Fruit a dry capsule with a fleshy calyx or a spherical berry.
The distinction in fruit characters often used to distinguish Gaultheria (dry capsule with a fleshy calyx) and Pernettya (berry with persistent but more or less unchanged calyx) is now considered unsatisfactory, the 2 genera being combined under Gaultheria.
A genus that is rarely grown except in cooler districts which have the moisture and shade required for the available species.
G. lanceolata Hook.f. is a small shrub from Tasmania with leaves about 1.5 cm long and the fruit more or less enclosed by the calyx. [Pernettya lanceolata (Hook f.) B.L. Burtt & A.W. Hill]
G. myrsinoides Humb., Bonpl. & Kunth subsp. pentlandii DC. from Montane Costa Rica and N Chile is a low, creeping shrub with downy shoots.
G. nummularioides D. Don, a small shrub from the Himalaya and W China, has intermingled branches and leaves in 2 ranks.
G. shallon Pursh from W N America forms dense stoloniferous clumps and has leaves to 10 cm long.
G. sinensis Anthony from China and the Himalaya is a low, small shrub with bristle-toothed leaves 1-1.5 cm long.
G. tasmanica (Hook. f.) D.J. Middleton is from Tasmania and has leaves 4-8 mm long and a succulent fruit. [Pernettya tasmanica Hook. f.]
G. ×wisleyensis D.J. Middleton [G. mucronata × G. shallon] is generally grown as the cultivar 'Wisley Pearl', a small shrub with leaves to about 4 cm long and scarlet fruit in dense clusters. [×Gaulnettya]
Softwood cuttings, division or seed.
About 170 species from Australiasia (5 species from Australia), Japan. W Indies and America.
Middleton (1990), Middleton & Wilcock (1990).
Source: (1997). Ericaceae. In: . Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia. Volume 2. Flowering plants. Dicotyledons. Part 1. The identification of garden and cultivated plants. University of New South Wales Press.
