Find Issai Beautyberry (Callicarpa dichotoma 'Issai') in Lancaster York Harrisburg Pennsylvania PA at Stauffers Of Kissel Hill (American Beautyberry)
These native plants help keep your gardening looking good through the seasons.
Now, on Gardener’s Path, learn how to grow the native shrub American beautyberry. You’ll love its arching branches laden with clusters of purple berries.
Shrubs of the southeast cover the region from Florida to eastern Texas and north to Virginia and Tennessee. Gardeners must deal with extreme heat and humidity
Brilliant purple clusters! Birds love them. Moths and butterflies love them. And they make a delightful jam too. The American Beautyberry is a shrub, 6-9 feet in height. Shoot growth occurs throughout much of the season. It is characterized by its attractive foliage and clusters of flowers or fruit around the leaf nodes. Leaves are simple, opposite or subopposite, and deciduous. The leaves are 3-5 inches long, 1-3 inches wide, oval-shaped, with an acute apex. Leaf bases are tapered. Leaf margins are serrate. Leaf surfaces are green and usually glabrous above, paler and pubescent below. Petioles are short and slender. The flowers are perfect and in sessile clusters around the leaf nodes. Fruit is a 4-pitted lavender-pink, magenta, or violet drupe, about 1/4 inch in diameter. The fruit lasts long into winter and are eaten by a variety of birds. American beautyberry is a food plant used by the larvae of many species of butterflies and moths making is a wonderful butterfly garden plant. Birds including robins, catbirds, cardinals, mockingbirds, brown thrashers, finches and towhees are favorite consumers of both the fresh berries and the shriveled ones in later winter. The fruit is also a favorite of white tailed deer and they will forage on it well into the winter months as well. American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) Also called French mulberry. www.susanfordcollins.com
Prized for its richly colored berries that grace the plant throughout the fall, Callicarpa japonica (Japanese Beautyberry) is a small, rounded, deciduous shrub.
Callicarpa americana, American Beauty Berry or French Mulberry is a multiple stemmed shrub with the most unusual colored fruit of any of our native species varying from violet to ultramarine blue-purple or pink and is a very attractive addition to the home flower beds or yard. Native Callicarpa American Beauty Berry seeds are eaten by several species of birds including bobwhite quail and by raccoon, opossum, gray fox and squirrel. American Beauty Berry has fruits August to November, they are sweet and berrylike, in expanded clusters on the stems and are 1/8 to 1/4 inch in diameter. The roots, leaves and branches of the American beautyberry were used by the Alabama, Choctaw, Creek, Koasati, Seminole and other Native American tribes for various medicinal purposes. The roots, leaves and branches were made into a decoction that was used in sweat baths to treat both malarial fevers and rheumatism. The boiled plant parts were poured into a big pan that was placed near the patient inside a sweathouse. A similar decoction of the roots was used to treat dizziness and stomachaches. The roots of Callicarpa americana were boiled with roots from Rubus spp. to make an infusion to treat dysentery. The roots and berries were boiled and drunk to treat colic. The bark from the stems and roots was used to treat itchy skin. A tea from the root bark was taken to treat urine retention or “urine stopped-up sickness.” The fruits of American beautyberry are an important food source for many species of birds including bobwhite quails, mockingbirds, robins, towhees, and brown thrashers. Animals that eat the fruit include armadillos, raccoons, wood rats, gray foxes, opossums, and white-tailed deer. The long-lasting fruits provide food for birds and animals well into the winter months when other food-sources are unavailable. This is straight out of the camera. EXPLORED # 481
Callicarpa dichotoma (Purple Beautyberry) is a small, compact, rounded, deciduous shrub primarily grown for its eye-catching display of purple berries from late summer through winter.
Brilliant purple clusters. The American Beautyberry is a shrub, 6-9 feet in height. Shoot growth occurs throughout much of the season. It is characterized by its attractive foliage and clusters of flowers or fruit around the leaf nodes. Leaves are simple, opposite or subopposite, and deciduous. The leaves are 3-5 inches long, 1-3 inches wide, oval-shaped, with an acute apex. Leaf bases are tapered. Leaf margins are serrate. Leaf surfaces are green and usually glabrous above, paler and pubescent below. Petioles are short and slender. The flowers are perfect and in sessile clusters around the leaf nodes. Fruit is a 4-pitted lavender-pink, magenta, or violet drupe, about 1/4 inch in diameter. The fruit lasts long into winter and are eaten by a variety of birds. American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) Also called French mulberry.
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Contrary to popular belief, the brilliant berries are not toxic; they can be used to make...
