Wildlife: These Snowberry berries are the shrub’s showiest feature

The North American common Snowberry or Symphoricarpos albus, is one of a small group of twiggy, deciduous shrubs which are mostly mainly grown in gardens and on rural estates for their attractive winter berries.

Often used as an informal hedge, this is a robust deciduous shrub with dense foliage and dark green leaves and grows up to about five or six feet in height. The small pink summer flowers are followed by medium-sized white round fruits in autumn. The common snowberry shrubs are interesting throughout most of the year, blooming in spring, with small but dense clusters of bell-shaped, white flowers at the tips of the branches. However, whilst the flowers are not exactly stunning, in the autumn the flowers are replaced by clusters of white berries. These berries are the shrub’s showiest feature and last well into the winter months. Indeed, the berries are the main reason for growing the shrub in the garden, and potentially provide a little interest when other plants have died down. Moreover, for the wildlife garden, they provide late food sources for berry-eating birds when other berry crops are being depleted. Clearly, the berries are the reason for this plant spreading widely into the wild and establishing, often hardly noticed, in hedgerows and woodland edges across suburbs and in the countryside. First recorded in cultivation in the early nineteenth century, it was noted as escaping to the wild by the 1860s. It thrives in scrubland, disused railways lines, riverbanks, and roadsides, and is often planted in parks and similar areas.

One reason for its rapid spread in rural areas is that it was planted as excellent game cover on shooting estates, providing shelter for pheasants which also feasted on the berries. Although the ripened berries are predominantly white, as the winter moves on, the cluster takes on orange, brown, and black hues as well, to become quite striking and very distinctive. In the garden rather than in wilder locations, the plant is a bit straggly and untidy, but as winter cover and bird-food in a sheltered corner of the plot, it does have merit.

Professor Ian D. Rotherham, researcher, writer & broadcaster on wildlife & environmental issues, is contactable on [email protected] ; follow Ian’s blog (https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/ ) and Twitter @IanThewildside