Tom's Life Bits

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===== Beautyberry lives up to its name =====

//By Catherine Bollinger//\\
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Beautyberries can range in color from violet to pink\\
Over the last 20 years, I've been adding small trees and shrubs to my landscape with two main goals: increased beauty and improved wildlife habitat. Every plant I've added meets one or both of these objectives, including the native shrub American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana).

This shrub, native to moist woodland edges throughout the Southeast, will grow 3 to 8 feet tall. Its habit is loose and open, and the leaves are rather large. It does well at the back of a border or mixed in with other understory plants in naturalized areas, where it goes unnoticed until this time of year, when the berries light up my woodland.

On my plant, neon-magenta, bead-size berries, as shiny as Mardi Gras beads, grow in big clusters around the branch stems. I've read that berry color varies from more violet and pink shades to the electrifying magenta of my plant, and you can also find white-berried forms. I like the way the berries on my specimen light up the forest edge, where it thrives at the bottom of a hill.

Birds are supposed to like the berries, but in my yard, they are a food of last resort, usually shriveling into raisinlike clusters by late winter before they are finally consumed. Their unpopularity with the feathered crowd relieves me of any guilt when I cut a few branches to display in the house. Paired with short evergreen magnolia branches and a few late flowers, the berried branches add pizazz to indoor arrangements.

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