A suite of 8 venation characteristics from 2 closely related sections of Vaccinium, § Macropelma and § Myrtillus, were analyzed in order to: assess the level of similarity between these sister sections, address the questionable classification of Vaccinium cereum, and assess the diagnostic ability of venation characteristics. Taximetric analysis showed that these foliar venation characters were diagnostic at the sectional level but not at the species level. A cluster analysis of the 108 OTU's did separate the two sections but did not distinguish among the twelve individual species. However, a similar taximetric analysis using the character means for the eight foliar characters, which " smoothed out " the variation due to environmental plasticity (Hu et al., 1985), produced a dendrogram which closely resembled the currently accepted Vaccinium classification. Although further investigations into the constancy and reliability of foliar venation characters are necessary, these preliminary results suggest that these vegetative foliar characters do have diagnostic value and can be utilized in taximetric analyses.