Purple reign of the beauty berry

THERE are lots of berry-carrying plants in autumn and winter with bright yellow, orange or red berries, but not many with shiny purple berries and that makes the beauty berry a little bit special. It is a very pretty bush of medium to large size. The flowers are very inconspicuous, so it is grown for its berries and good autumn colour leaves.

The common name of callicarpa is ‘beauty berry’ and, more or less, is a straight translation of the botanical name. The little berries are shiny on the surface and resemble beads, carried in rounded clusters in the angles of the twigs and leaves. The colour is intense but not as easily seen from a distance as yellow or red berries. It can be planted with other summer-flowering shrubs that have gone bare now and offer little decoration, or berrying kinds such as yellow-berried pyracantha for a dramatic colour contrast, or it could be teamed with a yellow-variegated broad-leaved evergreen such as elaeagnus. It can make a big shrub of more than two metres and needs reasonable room to show off its style.

The variety most often offered for sale is Profusion, a choice strain with purplish young leaves in spring and a good wine-red flush in the autumn leaves before they fall. It also carries a good crop of berries reliably. Callicarpa is native to Western China and it is hardy in most areas, but the summers of its native region are much warmer than here. It can be grown in an ordinary fertile soil that is well-drained and not prone to waterlogging in winter.