Beauty Berry - Callicarpa Dichotoma

August 24th, 2015. As I was putting ideas together on Callicarpa because, well, it was on the site I was working with yesterday, I walked into Urban Roots Community Garden Center (at the corner of Rhode Island and Brayton - 14213) and one was displayed at the entrance.

Beauty Berry - Callicarpa dichotoma

Callicarpa.

Buffalo, NY soils lean towards being a clay loam but ceratinly have a wide range of properties as deposited by the glacier years ago. Callicarpa always seems to perform regardless of its site or location. Its uniquely colored berries are its design queue.

It will often have its branches die back from cold in the winter and we'll probably find it tidyest to treat it as a cut back shrub. I think this tendency keeps it relegated to the plant hipster world as this added maintenance demand becomes anxiety producing in the realm of "low maintenance" landscapes.

Callicarpa is in a special grouping of plants for me. It was hot in the late nineties and early 2000's when I was working with Dee. There is a whole field of plants that we agreed were cool at the time but have never really taken off beyond our relationship. Others in this regime would be Corylopsis, Corydalis, Dicentra, Acer griseum, and Cercis - the list would double with some work but I'm trying to point toward groupings of plants and materials that always evoke a memory and association with something or someone.

Callicarpa - Beauty Berry

Callicarpa - Beauty Berry