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Sunday, October 27, 2013

Wildflower Wednesday: Berberis nervosa, favorite plant of the week

Welcome to my Wildflower Wednesday post, late, to see other wildflower posts, join others at hostess Gail's Clay and Limestone blog.   I'm also linking this with favorite plant pick of the week on hostess Loree's Danger Garden, see the comment section for other people's favorite plant picks.

   I'm presenting one of the plants that grows wild in my 2 acre garden.  The previous owner (PO) logged, and left little pockets of the original plants.   My favorite is Berberis (formerly Mahonia)  nervosa, a low-growing Cascade Oregon-grape.  It has glossy leathery dark green evergreen leaves.

Over time it spreads slowly by rhizomes to make stands that unfortunately get invaded with the native blackberry pest, Rubus ursinus, I just spend part of a day cutting out all the vines from this patch and dripping a little brush killer on the cut surfaces,  I'm an organic gardener but the blackberry vines have pushed me into what I hope is a very low-impact use.  It does seem to slow down their reappearance.  

They flower in April with sprays of yellow flowers like most Mahonia/Berberis species.

In addition to looking beautiful, they also yield edible dark purple berries, loaded with anti-oxidants.   They are like Salal, a little strong-tasting alone but nice cooked with some other fruit to make jelly or gelatin dessert.

Being a native plant, they are tough as nails here and need no supplemental water, even with our dry summers.  There are many native species of (ex-Mahonia) Berberis that are very worthwhile low-maintenance garden shrubs.  Berberis nervosa is a low-growing plant, others can be 3-4' tall.   A nice feature is that they seem to have no appeal for deer.   I've been also trying to grow one from the SW from seed, Berberis fendleri, but it is very slow-growing so still very small.

There are also a lot of very attractive and deer resistant thorny species from around the world, some with larger more-utilized fruit.  The Asian cultivar 'Soft Caress' caught my eye at a fair and is on my plant lust list.  I have also bought Berberis darwinii, a marvelous arching shrub with tiny leaves, and the diminutive Berberis stenophylla corallina.

Interestingly, the USDA site still lists them as Mahonia, and has 10 species listed as native, various ones in most of the US.   Tough plants, why not?    Hannah


9 comments:

  1. This is one of my favorite natives too.But I don't think I'll ever call it anything but Mahonia. I didn't know the berries were edible.

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    1. I also hate these name changes, I started out writing with the Mahonia name, but caved. But perhaps there is hope since the USDA site still calls them Mahonia. It seems really confusing to me to call them Berberis.

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  2. It's so pretty and sounds like a great choice for your garden. No longer Mahonia? I learned something new and I've only just begun to think of Mahonia for my own garden. How should we keep up when the names are moving about as they do?

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    1. Last year I crushed some berries and went around sowing them randomly, I haven't been able to tell if any came up, but they are very difficult to transplant, unlike Salal which I have transplanted. The Aster change still bugs me, I guess if the growers and gardeners won't acknowledge the name changes, they could just ignore the taxonomists.

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  3. Mahonia is one of those plants I would love to have in my garden, but unfortunately it's not hardy here. I saw quite a few different cultivars while on a visit to North Carolina last year and thought they were beautiful. Isn't it interesting that a plant some of us would love to grow but can't becomes invasive in another environment? I don't blame you at all for using the brush killer. I try to avoid pesticides, too, but we have volunteer mulberry trees popping up all over, and brush-killer is the only way to keep them from returning even after they've been cut down.

    Thanks for visiting me--Happy Wildflower Wednesday!

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    1. Growing in the colder zones can be challenging. I looked at the USDA site again and they show Mahonia aquifolium growing up into Canada so I don't understand the conflicting information, one site said it was hardy to zone 5. I don't put weed killer on the Mahonia, but on the invasive blackberries. I also have to use it on stumps of hazelnut and big leaf maple since they will keep suckering and growing again, but that is pretty much all, and since I only cover the cut surface it doesn't get into my soil.

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  4. I would never get rid of a Mahonia plant, they are wonderful and not at all invasive. I would welcome them in any of the non-mown areas of my yard, but find them hard to spread. In addition to the edible fruit, the bark of it and other Barberries is medicinal, anti-bacterial, and here is an article about uses against Psoriasis-

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7997469

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  5. Hannah what a great native plant...I love those that are tough and take care of themselves.

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    1. Thanks, Donna, I don't have to water them in the summer and they always look great.

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