Catberry

Size, growth and what to expect

Catberry grows slowly, about a foot a year in our growth estimator. In a New York peatland, plants stood about 4.5 feet tall at 5 years, 6.5 feet at 10 and 11.5 feet at 20. It makes a many-stemmed shrub 3 to 10 feet tall, and a few reach 15 feet. Its thin leaves run 1 to 2.5 inches long, often with a tiny point at the tip.

Small, pale yellow flowers with narrow petals open in May and June. They hang singly on thread-like stalks along the new shoots. On female plants, bright red berries a quarter to a third of an inch across ripen in July and August. Each hangs on a stalk up to an inch long, and birds take most of them before winter.

It grows wild from Newfoundland to Minnesota, south to West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. Its home is bogs, fens, swamps, wet woods and lakeshores on acid peat or sand. In a bog it often stands in the band of tall shrubs at the edge of the mat. Its leaves feed the caterpillars of the Columbia silkmoth.

How to grow Catberry

Catberry grows in full sun or part shade, in a wet, acid soil of peat or sand. Nearly all wild plants grow in wetlands, and it does best where the ground stays wet. Plant it 5 feet from a wall and set plants 5 feet apart. At its size it can go within 15 feet of overhead wires.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant them dormant, from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper. Set the crown at the soil line, put the native soil back in, and keep the mulch clear of the stems. Seed needs a long warm, damp spell and then a winter, and cold alone does not wake it. Sow cleaned seed outdoors in fall, an eighth of an inch deep under mulch. Seedlings come up slowly and unevenly, in the second or third spring. For a spring sowing, keep it in a damp bag at room temperature for two to five months and then in the refrigerator for two to three months.

Water weekly through the first two summers unless the ground stays wet. It spreads by root suckers into an upright thicket over the years. It needs little pruning.

Most plants are male or female, and only females bear the berries, so plant three or more seedlings for a male and a female. A few plants bear both male and female flowers. Birds eat the berries and spread the seed. As with other hollies, eating the berries can make a person mildly ill.