Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) in the Ilex Database

These bright berries are abundant in low lying boggy/swampy areas locally. I only recently learned these existed in our county. They are plentiful in September and October; and it appears birds and other small wildlife feed on them.

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Common Winterberry is a wonderful deciduous holly species that is native from Nova Scotia and far southeast Canada, New England down into Louisiana up to northern Minnesota & Wisconsin. In the wild it grows in bogs, swamps, wet meadows, along creeks and lakes and moist woods edges. Its twigs are smooth, slender, zigzag, and dark gray to gray-brown to purplish and the stem bark is smooth and gray. It has small white waxy flowers with staminate flowers with 4 tiny anthers on male plants and pistillate flowers with a tiny pistil on female plants in June. The female plants then bear the scarlet red to orange-red berries in late summer that can last into February, depending, as the birds and small mammals love them. Usually in the wild this species only grows in draining wet, acid soil below pH 6.0, but it has been reported to grow in alkaline soil up to pH 8.0. My two cultivars are doing well in moist, sometimes dry, pH 6.9 soil in the backyard. This shrub has a shallow lateral root system and it transplants easily. It is offered by many garden centers and nurseries in several male or female cultivars. Some native plant nurseries offer the straight species.

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