Features

Along fields and in the woods over much of North America, your eye could catch some bright color even this time of year.  

Look for plump, red winterberries, made even more dramatic for the way they cling closely to and contrast the plants’ almost black twigs. 

With good reason, the plant is also known as Christmasberry, coralberry, or Michigan holly.  

The plant is, in fact, a deciduous species of holly – our most widespread and cold-hardy native species. 

To plant winterberry for its fruits, you need a male and a female.  

Many varieties are available, some notable for being dwarf (Nana); some for their orange fruit (Afterglow); some for their yellow fruit (Chrysocarpa), and some for their particular abundance of fruit (Winter Red). 

Instead of buying a named variety, wild plants could be your source of plants. 

No need to dig up a wild plant, though. Just pluck a few berries for seeds, or prune off a few twigs for cuttings. 

The most important ingredient in growing winterberries from seeds is time. The seeds need 18 months to germinate.  

These seedlings will yield a mix of males and females, usually about one female for every three to 10 males.  

Unfortunately, you cannot distinguish males from females until they are old enough to flower. 

Stem cuttings, taken now or in early summer, are a quicker way to make plants.  

Those taken in early summer are especially easy to root.  

Cuttings have the advantage that they fruit sooner than do seedlings and, if the bush furnishing the cuttings had fruit, you know it’s a female. 

Winterberry is very forgiving about soil.  

Wild plants are often found growing in shade and in areas too wet for most other cultivated plants.  

Winterberry, however, can be grown equally well a site with full sun and well-drained soil. 

Winterberry does require a very acidic soil, one with a pH in the range of 4.5 to 5.5.  

Plenty of acidic peat moss, or some sulfur, can bring the  

soil pH down to that range,  

if necessary.  

A soil this acidic, incidentally, also is perfect for rhododendrons and mountain laurels, whose evergreen leaves make a nice backdrop for the winterberry fruits in winter. 

Even without that backdrop of evergreen leaves, winterberry makes a cheery winter sight, especially against lily-white snow.  

And indoors, the stems with their plump, bright fruits make fine decorations – another holly with which to “deck the halls.”