3. Symphoricarpos Duhamel (snowberry)
Plants shrubs,
often colonial from rhizomes. First-year twigs 1–3 mm thick, usually
short-hairy but often becoming glabrous or nearly so later in the growing
season, the pith relatively small, white to tan, often hollow in larger twigs.
Winter buds more or less ovate, flattened, with several overlapping scales.
Leaves with short, unwinged petioles, none perfoliate. Stipules absent. Leaf
blades simple, unlobed or those of the first leaves of the season sometimes
varying from undulate to irregularly and bluntly lobed, ovate to oblong or elliptic,
the margins otherwise entire. Flowers in dense, small clusters or dense, short
spikes or spikelike racemes, these in the axils of the upper leaves and usually
also terminal on the branches, the spikes with a pair of small, scalelike
bracts at the nodes, these free or fused at the base, ovate to broadly
triangular, the individual flowers subtended by a pair of small bractlets,
these shorter than to about as long as the ovaries. Calyx lobes 0.5–0.8 mm
long, triangular to narrowly triangular. Corollas 3–9 mm long, actinomorphic,
bell-shaped with a cup-shaped tube about 2–5 mm long and a spreading, 5-lobed
portion 2–9 mm in diameter (measured across the top of the flower), the lobes
rounded, pink or greenish and purplish. Style 3–7 mm long. Fruits berrylike
drupes, 4–6(–7) mm in diameter, more or less spherical, white to greenish white
or pink, red, or purplish red at maturity. Seedlike nutlets (also called
pyrenes or stones) 2, 2.5–5.0 mm long, more or less ovate to elliptic in
outline, flattened on 1 side and rounded on the other side, the surface smooth
or nearly so, white or dull yellow. Nine to 17 species, North America, Asia.
Species of Symphoricarpos
often spread by underground runners and form dense colonies in dry, lightly
shaded places. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals. The berries are not
edible and are said to cause vomiting and diarrhea if eaten in large
quantities. Birds will eat them during the winter months, but often not until
other food sources have been exhausted.