There's no Berries like Snowberries

Just arrived at Williams!

If on Family Feud the question was “What is the Color of a Plant’s Berries?” I’m sure that the number one answer would be red. I think part of this association is with the red berried hollies that many decorate with during the holidays. Even though red is extremely popular, there are quite a few other colored berried plants that one can use for the landscape.

Last September, I was at Garden Center of America’s Fashion in Bloom, and found a great improvement on an old fashioned berry producing plants at the Monrovia Grower’s display. I first saw this plant in one of my horticulture classes at Rutgers, and thought it was pretty cool when I saw it twenty five years ago. When I saw these this year, I stopped in my tracks and was 'wowed.' This Plant is from the Genus Symphoricarpos. Commonly known as either a Snowberry or Coralberry, the Symphoricarpos is a plant that is native to the North Eastern United States. A French botanist Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau classified it in the 18th century. Virtually all Native American tribes in its range used this plant as a medicinal for treating a wide variety of ailments from upset stomach to eye inflammation. When its twigs are honed in a fire, they were converted into sharp-tip tools. The plant has been cultivated for several centuries but its true garden worthiness has only just started to be proven with recent advances by a Dutch breeding program. These newer varieties produce more uniform fruit, and the berries tend to persist for an extremely long time.

Before there’s a berry there needs to be a flower. These produce a small whitish pink flower in the summer. Berries are produced in clusters. Sometimes these clusters can have over 25 berries in just one of cluster. The plant is then covered with these clusters. The fruit starts to color up in the fall.

Each variety has its own appealing colors: Bright Fantasy’s berries show a bright snowy white color, Charming Fantasy offers a range from pink to white, and Scarlet Pearl produces a larger berry whose color is reddish purple. The berries hold up well as a cut flower and will last several weeks in an arrangement.

Although snowberries are pretty in the fall, they are outstanding in the winter. Once the fall has left this plant without its leaves, the berries hang on the stem into the winter. It’s a great plant to have outside of a window so one can look upon its beauty in January when everything in the landscape looks drab and dreary.

The snowberry grows moderately fast and will generally mature to a height and width of about 4’. It will produce its best berries in Full to partial sun. It’s extremely tolerant of cold winters and can survive even into zone 3 where temperatures dip to 40 below zero. Since I’ve seem them flower profusely in a growers container, I’m thinking that they would be great in a patio planter, but I haven’t tried this out yet. Since they flower on new wood in the summer, and berries are produced in the fall, pruning should be done in the early Spring. I would remove some of the interior wood when pruning, so to let light into the center of the plant to increase the fruit production. Snowberries are a great addition to the landscape since they also become a late season food for many wildlife species. They can make a great hedge plant, since they are far easier to manage than privet or forsythia. They would also make a great accent for the edge of a woodland garden. If you plant one in the front yard, you may have to be careful since you may get people knocking at your door asking “What is that cool plant with the berries?”