Helpful Information
Habitat: Native to Japan. Hardy to zone 5.
Habit: A multistemmed deciduous shrub, 4’ to 6’ tall with an equal width, rounded shape, upright branching.
Foliage: Opposite, simple elliptic leaves with acuminate tips; margins are finely serrated, medium green.
Flowers: Small pale pink flowers in 1” to 1.5” clusters in July, often obscured by the foliage.
Fruit: Small metallic purple berries in rounded axillary clusters, color develops in October, fruit display is at its best after the leaves have dropped, very showy in full fruit well into December, “the quality of the fruit color is unrivaled.”
Bark: Stems are slender and bark development is not ornamental.
Use: Shrub borders, in groupings and mass plantings, showy fruit display, a semihardy shrub or herbaceous perennial.
Liabilities: when not in fruit it is an ordinary shrub without multiseason appeal; lack of cold hardiness in zone 5; needs regular pruning to remove winter injury and control rank growth.
Beautyberry ~ Callicarpa dichotoma ~ has become one of my favorite shrubs. It is a delicate leggy shrub with eye-popping color of the friut that captures the onlooker instantly. Further, the fruit is balanced in perfect symmetry on a graceful drooping branch and, better still, the color holds forth in the winter! This is its most generous gift. Like the Ilex verticillata (Winterberry) the Callicarpa adds color to an icy landscape. The small gift of this elegant shrub lifts the heads of the weary in winter and makes you believe that life is full of reasons to have hope.
