Photo: Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Northern Bayberry
Morella pensylvanica
Also called myrica pensylvanica, bayberry, candleberry, swamp candleberry, waxberry, tallowshrub.
Waxy gray berries hold above the snow all winter for yellow-rumped warblers, tree swallows and quail; a salt-tolerant shrub that fixes its own nitrogen.
Wildlife valueNitrogen fixingSalt tolerantDrought tolerantTolerates wet soilScreening
- Type
- Shrub
- Mature height
- 5–10 ft
- USDA zones
- 3–7
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Sun
- Full · Part
- Soil moisture
- Dry · Average · Wet
210
Northern bayberry is a dense, rounded shrub of the coast from Newfoundland to North Carolina and of inland fields, barrens and pond edges west to Ohio. The glossy leaves smell of bayberry candles when crushed and stay on into winter, all winter in the south of the range. The April and May catkins are nothing to look at, but on female plants they become clusters of small waxy gray-white fruit that crowd the stems from September until April, above the snow. That wax is the point: the yellow-rumped warbler can digest it and so winters farther north than most warblers, and on the Mid-Atlantic coast bayberry and wax myrtle were 99 percent of the seed passed by wintering birds. Tree swallows feed on it from fall into spring, and bobwhite, grouse, turkey and many songbirds take it through the winter. Perfect for a windbreak along a salted road, a bird hedge on poor sandy ground or the low corner that stays damp.
It fixes nitrogen through Frankia bacteria in its roots, which is why it grows on sand, mine spoil and road cuts with no topsoil at all and stands salt spray, road salt, drought and wet ground alike. Plants are male or female, wind pollinated, and a seedling does not show its sex until it flowers at three or four years, so plant a group. It spreads by root suckers into a thicket. Settlers boiled the fruit for candle wax; one candle took several thousand berries.
How to grow Northern Bayberry
Northern bayberry grows in full sun or light shade in any soil from beach sand to clay, wet or dry, poor or fertile, best on sandy or peaty ground near pH 6 to 6.5. Hardy in zones 3 through 7, it reaches 5 to 10 feet tall and as wide and widens by suckers, so set plants 4 feet apart for a hedge and 5 feet from a walk or wall.
Plant bare-root or potted shrubs while dormant, in a hole wider than the roots and no deeper, crown at the soil line, native soil back in, mulch clear of the stems, no fertilizer. Clear the grass first; bayberry competes poorly with established vegetation. For seed, pick the fruit in September or October and rub the wax off on a screen, since seed will not germinate through it, then sow outdoors in late fall under an inch of sand and a mulch pulled off in early spring, or hold it in damp sand in the refrigerator for 90 days and sow in spring.
Water weekly through the first summer if rain is short; after that it needs nothing. Deer mostly pass bayberry by, though they browse it in winter on Assateague and in the Pine Barrens, so cage it where deer are heavy, and keep mulch thin at the stems so voles do not nest there. Heavy pruning weakens it and can cause dieback; head back the few lanky shoots that flop and leave the rest.
Growth is medium, and a seedling first fruits at three or four years, when its sex shows. Only females carry fruit and the pollen travels on the wind, so a male must grow nearby; one plant in five should be male, and a group of five to seven seedlings will almost always include one. It has no serious pests or diseases.
Heights and zones are typical ranges for the species in cultivation; local conditions and seed source shift them.
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