Photo: Fritzflohrreynolds, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Maleberry
Lyonia ligustrina
Also called he-huckleberry, male blueberry, northern maleberry.
A tough native heath of swamp edge and dry ridge, hung with white bells in June for four rare specialist bees, that almost no nursery grows.
Wildlife valueShowy flowersTolerates wet soilFall colorRare
- Type
- Shrub
- Mature height
- 6–12 ft
- USDA zones
- 5–9
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Sun
- Full · Part
- Soil moisture
- Wet · Average · Dry
210
Maleberry is a rounded, much-branched shrub of the heath family, a cousin of the blueberries, native from Maine down the Appalachians, the Piedmont and the coastal plain to Florida and Texas. It grows at the margins of swamps, ponds and streams, in bogs and pine barrens and in dry rocky woods, wet ground and dry alike. In June clusters of small white urn-shaped bells hang along last year's twigs and feed bees, among them four rare pollen specialists Fowler and Droege record on it: Colletes productus and Melitta melittoides, both found in Maryland and Virginia, and Andrena kalmiae and Perdita novaeangliae. The oval leaves turn orange-red in fall, and the flowers become hard brown five-parted capsules a quarter inch across that hang on into winter. Ideal for a rain garden, a pond edge or a dry acid ridge where a bee planting is wanted.
It is a shrub almost nobody sells. The flowers are small and the fruit is dry, so it is seldom grown, though NC State calls it a nectar plant that makes good honey. The names maleberry and he-huckleberry are a joke on that dry fruit, a blueberry relative with nothing to eat, and the leaves are poisonous to livestock, so keep it out of pasture. It spreads by rhizomes into a loose colony and resprouts after fire or a hard cutback, and though it is a wetland indicator plant it climbs to dry ridges and heath balds at 6,500 feet.
How to grow Maleberry
Maleberry grows in full sun or part shade and does best in sun. It is hardy in zones 5 through 9: the references say 6, but it is native to Maine and stands 21 degrees below zero. It wants acid soil, pH 5 to 6.5, and takes anything from a bog edge that stays wet to a dry rocky slope. Plants reach 6 to 12 feet tall and as wide or wider, so space them 6 to 8 feet apart.
Plant dormant bare-root or potted shrubs from leaf fall until bud swell, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, crown at the soil line, native soil back in, mulch clear of the stems. The seed is dust, 100 to 300 to a capsule, and needs no chilling. Pick the capsules as they turn brown in September and October, keep them dry at room temperature over winter, then in spring shake the seed out and sow it on the surface of a moist peat and sand mix, pressed in and not covered, under a clear lid, and keep it damp.
Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short, and a plant on dry ground the second summer too. Cage seedlings for two winters where deer and rabbits are heavy, and keep mulch thin at the base so voles do not nest there. It flowers on last year's wood, so prune, if at all, right after bloom in July.
Growth is medium. Every flower has both stamens and a pistil, but no source says whether one plant alone sets full seed, so plant two or three. It has no known pests or diseases and comes back from the roots after fire. Keep it away from grazing animals; the leaves are toxic to livestock, horses, dogs and cats.
Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.
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