A modern reference to temperate woody plants, including updated content from this site and much new material, can be found at Trees and Shrubs Online.

Symphoricarpos

Family

Caprifoliaceae

An unimportant genus of shrubs, of which only two have been widely cultivated in Britain, though several others have been introduced. Leaves opposite, not toothed but sometimes with a wavy lobing. Flowers of no beauty, but nectar-rich and much visited by bees, arranged in dense terminal or axillary racemes, sometimes solitary. The genus is allied to Lonicera, but the corolla is more or less regular and the berry is two-seeded. The generic name was coined by J. J. Dillen (Dillenius) and published by him in the Hortus Elthamensis (1732), the catalogue of the Sherard garden at Eltham in Kent. It refers to the arrangement of the fruits, which are so clustered as to resemble a compound fruit; they are commonly white, but red in S. orbiculatus, partly pink in S. mexicanus and dark blue in S. sinensis.

The genus has about fifteen species in North and Central America, and was thought to be wholly confined to the New World until Wilson found S. sinensis Rehd. in W. China. This differs from all the others in its dark blue fruits, which are ovoid, about 516 in. long and covered with a plum-like bloom. It was introduced to Britain in 1912 from the Arnold Arboretum but has never spread into gardens, probably because the fruits are too near to black.

A monograph of the genus by G. N. Jones was published in Journ. Arn. Arb., Vol. 21 (1940), pp. 203-52.

All the species grow well in any moist soil, and are easily propagated by cuttings, several by division.

Species articles