High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Arctostaphylos alpina (common names Alpine Bearberry, Mountain Bearberry, or Black Bearberry, basionym Arbutus alpina L.) is a procumbent shrub 10-30 cm high. Leaves are clearly toothed and the edges are not downturned. They often turn red in autumn and are not winter green, but dead leaves can persist on stems for several years. Berries dark purple to black. Flowers are white. Distribution: circumpolar, at high latitudes, from Scotland east across Scandinavia, Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland; southern limits in Europe in the Pyrenees and the Alps, in Asia to the Altay Mountains, and in North America to British Columbia in the west, and Maine and New Hampshire in the U.S. in the east.