Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) A Favorite Native Landscape Plant

Although this winterberry (Ilex verticillata) has only a few
berries remaining, the winterberry is widely used in
wreaths and decorative holiday arrangements for its
winter color.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011. Do not copy.

Driving along the back roads of New Hampshire in the fall after the leaves have dropped, it is not unusual to see the otherwise bare branches of the winterberry (Ilex verticillata) bedecked with bright red berries. In fact, you'll often see cars stopped near these wild, native shrubs clipping off the branches with the festively colored berries to weave them into homemade wreathes or to simply arrange them in vase as a holiday decoration. Winterberries are actually a species of holly plants as are all members of the Ilex genus.

I did not think that there was any winterberry growing on my property, but while taking a walk through the woods yesterday, I noticed a few dozen red berries on a thin tree-like plant that stood about 6 feet high. Winterberry! As you can see from some of the pictures on this page, it was growing in what I might call a vernal pool, if it were spring. Since it is December, however, I'll call it a wet, low-lying area flooded by recent rains and snow-melt located in the forest about twenty feet away from the edge of a stream bed.

Two small winterberry shoots can be seen to the right of
the larger main stem emerging from runner roots that
travel underground.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011. Do not copy.

As you can also see from the picture on the right, the forest floor there is covered in this year's fallen leaves and pine needles. The decay of leaves and evergreen needles tends to make soil acidic, which is actually preferred by the winterberry. It also prefers very moist soil such as that found along roadside ditches, river banks, lake shores, and wet, low-lying areas in the middle of the forest.

Winterberry is shade tolerant and will grow in areas of only partial sun, such as the middle of a forest where I found this one. It will grow, much fuller and bear more fruit if it is placed in full sun since it will be able to harvest more energy from the sun which it uses to grow, flower, and fruit.

Actually, though, not all winterberry plants fruit. The plant has both male and female sexes and it is only the female plants that will produce the bright red berries. In order to do that, however, they need to be pollinated by a male winterberry plant. If you have one on your property that does not flower, then it is either a male plant, or a female plant without any male winterberry plants nearby.

Aside from the berries, which grow off the sides of young branches as shown in the pictures, the bark is a useful identification marker in the winter as well. The trunk and branches have horizontal lenticels, much like a birch tree, that break up the smooth bark. A lenticel, as we are reminded by this Cornell University publication,  is an area that allows the  plant's inner bark to "breathe," by providing permeable openings in the bark of the winterberry, which would otherwise not allow gas exchange.

In the spring, the winterberry has tiny, yellow-green flowers, which will become green berries on the female plant if pollinated. The green berries ripen around late October, turning a vibrant red. The red berries will stay on the branches through most or all of the winter, providing eye-candy for humans and a more nutritious treat for many wild animals. The USDA says as many as 48 species of birds eat the fruit of the winterberry plant as do white-tailed deer, moose, snowshoe rabbits and cottontail rabbits, as long as the latter two can reach the berries, often aided in their reach by walking atop deep snow. Winterberry plants can reach as high as 8-15 feet in height.

Propagating Winterberries

Winterberries, like many wild plants, have redundant systems of reproduction. They have fruits that contain seeds, of course, but they also send out runners, roots that travel underground and surface periodically with a new plant, like lilacs and many other shrubs. With human intervention, cuttings can be taken and rooted to make new plants as well.

Seed Propagation of the Winterberry Plant

Winterberry fruit (Ilex verticillata) and two seeds
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

Of the three methods only the seeds produce new plants which contain a mix of the genetic material between the pollinating male plant and the fruit-producing female plant. Each berry contains 3-5 seeds each with a hard outer shell. That shell protects the seed as it travels through the digestive system of birds or other animals that eat the berries. The bright red fruit that is easy for birds to find helps ensure that the seeds are widely dispersed. Presumably, if the bird that found the berries prefers the same habitat in which it found the winterberry plant, then it will deposit the seeds, or most of them, in the plant's favored habitat although that may be far away from the parent plants.

Winterberry seeds do need to be cold-conditioned before they will germinate effectively. That means either leaving them outside and collecting them in the spring to be planted, or collecting them in the fall and winter from the ripe red berries and placing them in the refrigerator (not the freezer) for a period of 45 days or more before planting them as you would any other seed. Plants grown from seed may turn out to be either male or female plants, there's no way for the average gardener to choose, or even tell which it is until the plant is several years old and becomes sexually mature.

• Read more about cold conditioning seeds here

Winterberry Propagation by Runner Shoots and Cuttings

The runner shoots can be dug up after the leaves have dropped off the winterberry plant and it has gone dormant for the winter. The third method of propagating winterberries is to root cuttings. This is done in the spring (May-June) when the plant is primed and in growth mode. Using either of these propagation methods will result in new plants that are exact genetic copies of the plant from which they were taken. That means they will even be the same sex so plan accordingly and remember that you'll need at least one male, pollinating plant near the female plants if you want them to produce berries.

I'll write up and link some complete guides to various types of propagation, as well as handling and transplanting tips and link from each appropriate plant on this blog soon. --Follow this blog now with either Networked Blogs or Google Friend Connect (found in the margins of this page) if you don't want to miss it.--

In the spring, I'll definitely take some cuttings from this winterberry plant and add a few new plants to the more landscaped part of my yard along the stream bed in the back yard. Because winterberry is a native plant to the area and will be planted in the type of soil and conditions that it prefers. It is an eco-friendly choice for New Hampshire home-owners, requiring neither extra watering nor special pesticides or fertilizers to thrive here.

First Fungus - Cleft-foot Amanita (amanita brunnescens)

Cleft-foot Amanita in a mixed deciduous-
coniferous wood with many oak trees.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011
Do not copy.

I've always wanted to learn to identify mushrooms, particularly the edible ones, but have never gotten around to it. Hopefully, the effort of learning how to identify every species of plant (which does include fungi such as mushrooms) that lives in my yard will help get me there. I have about four acres of forest in my yard, which is home to a wide variety of mushrooms and other fungi, so if I can figure out all of the ones that grow here, I should have a good start of familiar species and I should know most of the key traits to look for in order to properly identify most species.

To start with, I photographed a mushroom in various states of growth as there were several of the same species present. I lifted one out of the ground to look at the base. I photographed the stalk and the underside of the cap. I noted the type of ground and vegetation around it. I thought I had all the bases covered. I was wrong.

For many species of mushrooms, it may be necessary to 1) bruise the mushroom stalk to see if the bruise discolors and if so what color it turns. 2) slice the gills and see if they exude a latex and, if they do, what color it is, and if it changes color after exposure to air. 3) take a spore print and see the color of the spores. A microscopic examination of the spores can also provide an identification key, although that would rarely, if ever, be needed.

In this case, however, I got lucky and believe I have a good identification using the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. The mushroom specimen pictured here appears to be the cleft-foot amanita (Amanita brunnescens). A species listed as "possibly poisonous," but closely related (and similar in appearance) to some very seriously poisonous Amanita mushrooms. How did I get to that conclusion? Let's go through the steps.

The vertical split is clearly visible in this specimen of
Cleft-foot Amanita.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011.

First, the general shape of the mushroom with the large, bulbous base, the cap shape, the scales on the top of the cap and the ring around the stalk strongly suggest an amanita according to the shape key in the Audubon Guide. In fact, the shape narrows it down to nine varieties of amanita. When I notice that one of these is called the cleft-foot amanita. I recall that I noticed a distinct  vertical split or cleft in the base (or foot) of each mushroom specimen that I examined. It even shows in some of the photos. Bingo. That's my prime candidate.

Then we run down the other field marks or identification keys for this species. Dark brown to whitish at the margin, check. Patches left over from the universal veil on the top of the cap, check. A collapsing pendant ring (looks like a skirt of skin-like tissue) around the mid or upper stalk, check. Large, bulbous base with an abrupt start from the stalk, check. Gills are free (meaning that the gills are not attached to the central stalk), check. The base has a distinct vertical cleft or split, check. Season: July- October, check. Grows on dry ground among deciduous trees, especially oak, check. Flesh is white, check. Bruises to reddish-brown, unknown (although there is some brownish discoloration where the stalk has been subject to normal wear). Spore print is white, unknown.

The gills and collapsed pendant ring of the cleft-foot amanita
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011

Furthermore the field guide provides several color plates which match my photos very closely and lists potential look-alike varieties (some of which are fatally poisonous) which I ruled out one by one by going through their identification guides. I feel quite confident in this identification. The spore print would help me pin it down to the genus Amanita, but I'm very confident at the genus level.

The bulbous base of the Cleft-foot Amanita begins abruptly
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011

The cleft-foot amanita while listed as "possibly poisonous" belongs to the same Family and genus as the infamous Death cap mushroom, the deadly Destroying Angel mushroom, the hallucination and coma inducing Panther (a very near look-alike, rarely found in the east) and Fly Agaric mushrooms. Therefore, of course, it should not be eaten under any circumstances.

Creeping Fragile Fern (Cystopteris protrusa) - ID Methods and Data Collection

Creeeping Fragile Fern (cystopteris protrusa)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

The plant species for today turned out to be the creeping fragile fern (Cystopteris protrusa), but it was a long two-day journey for me to figure it out. By the way, it’s also called Lowland Brittle Fern, Southern Bladder Fern, and Lowland Bladderfern. For me, identifying the species of the plants that grow in my yard is going to be much more difficult than identifying the animals that live in my yard as I do on my other blog: What Lives in my Yard. I could start off with very easy things like some of the big trees, the garden vegetables (whose names I can read from the seed packets), or some of the perennial flowers, but I want to develop some skills here and find reliable reference sources while I’m conducting this extended bio-survey. So today, I’m kicking it off with a fern, and detailing the process I went through to try to figure out what it was. A good field guide would have helped.

To start with, I chose a wild plant growing in my yard, one that I believe to be native to the region. It is an attractive forest edge border plant. I definitely want to keep it growing where it is and may even think about establishing it in additional areas.

Ordinarily, I’m going to include just one or two photos of each species that I record, because my storage space is limited. However, the first entry is going to be picture heavy, because I’m going to show a wide variety of traits that I captured in hopes of having enough information from which to draw a conclusion about this ferns’ true identity.

Gathering Data about Plants in the Field

Ferns along the forest edge
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

First, where does it grow? As you can see from the picture to the right, it grows along the forest edge, but looking around my yard, I see that it only grows on the shady side. In other words, the woods are to the south of the ferns and the open yard to the north. That means the ferns are never exposed to bright, direct sunlight. As you can see above in a photo taken at about 1:30 pm on July 20, even at midday, the ferns are in shade or, at most, dappled sunlight. These ones happen to be near the edge of a seasonal brook, but I don’t know whether that is coincidental or not.

Next, I look at the individual leaves and the pattern in which they grow from the stem. This photo shows that they alternate off the main stem. One grows on the left side then a little higher on the stalk one grows from the right side.  For many plants, that’s an important clue. We also notice that other than these complex leaves, there are absolutely no side branches.

Leaf detail of creeeping fragile ferm (Cystopteris protrusa)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

These are complicated leaves. They almost resemble fractal patterns in their complexity. Eventually, when we narrow it down to some likely candidates, we should be able to match this pattern up for an exact match. We also note that although the overall shape of the frond is like a triangle, widest at the base and narrowing as it goes toward the tip, the lowermost 2-3 pairs of leaves are a bit shorter than those nearer the center of the plant breaking the true triangular shape.

Meanwhile, from my experience in growing up as a curious young boy in the woods of New England, I know that many ferns have distinctive spore structures on the underside of each leaf. Flipping this one over, I see that it does. These little white dots will each release spores that will fall to the forest floor or drift on the wind, or the back of some furry animal, until it reaches a suitable place to grow. True ferns do not have seeds at all, they reproduce with spores. The shape, arrangement, color and size of these will also help us identify this fern.

Sori of the creeping fragile fern (Cystopteris protrusa)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

Individual stems lead from the soil, not clustered stems
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

What else can we see? At the base of each plant, a single stem emerges from the ground. These ferns don’t grow in clusters with many stems coming from a single base. Honestly, though, I don’t know what a fern’s root system looks like. Is there a bulb down there that stores energy through the winter? Are the roots like any normal plant? Let’s have a look. Carefully digging with my fingers so that I can feel the roots as I go and not damage them beyond all recognition, I find a surprise. The stem of the fern forms a perpendicular attachment to a horizontally running root.  Ah-ha! Although the fern is capable of reproducing through the dispersal of spores, it seems that might just be a back-up plan. Carefully following the “runner” or thick horizontal root, I come to another stem and another fern. Although they look like separate plants from above ground, they are, in fact, parts of the same larger plant.

Rhizome of Cystopteris protrusa showing next year's buds
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

The other end of this runner heads out toward the lawn. Let’s see what happens there. Ah-ha again! We see a number of tiny branches, also in an alternating pattern, each with a little green bud-like formation at its tip. These are new ferns waiting to break through the surface.  If I didn’t mow the edge here would the ferns keep marching out into the lawn? Would they grow even in the sunlight? Probably not in the full sun, but they’d push the edge and might do ok in the spring and fall when the sun is at a lower angle and the shady area is extended further out into the yard. The root system might extend itself this way for a considerable distance under the lawn, just hoping that one of those underground branches will break through the surface in an area where it can thrive.

Communal Ferns

Which brings up another interesting question: is this whole patch of ferns actually just one plant? Does it grow almost as a colony originating from one single interconnected root system? I might, in fact, only have one fern in my yard, although it covers several hundred square feet. If they are all a signal plant, that also tells us something about its vulnerability to environmental toxins. In theory, an application of a powerful systemic herbicide in one part of the yard might be transported through the runner system to kill an entire patch of ferns where only one or two ferns were actually sprayed.

Similarly, a fungus or bacterial infection might also spread through this underground piping network to take out a whole patch of ferns fairly quickly. If we saw that happening, we might use a shovel to sever the underground runners between healthy areas of the fern patch and unhealthy areas. Then physically dig out and remove the bad part of the colony and hope that whatever it was hadn’t yet reached the rest of the root system.

If we were chemically treating a fungus infection we’d want to make sure that we spray the entire patch rather than just the visibly affected area to prevent it from traveling through the runners to an untreated area. Mind you, this is just conjecture on my part, and would need to be tested experimentally for confirmation.

Fern Propagation

By the way, if we wanted to propagate this very attractive fern as a landscape border or a shady ground cover, we’d dig up and cut a section of the root and bury it in the area where we wanted it to grow. I’m not sure whether we’d need an end piece with the tiny ferns ready-formed or whether any section of the root would be viable. Again, that’s an experiment waiting to happen. I expect that the end piece with the buds would work best and produce new ferns faster and more prolifically, but any significantly sized section of the root would also survive and begin forming buds as well. Just guessing, though.

Anyway, sorry to get distracted, but that’s part of the reason why I’m conducting this bio-survey, to discover things I didn’t know about the things that live and grow right in my own backyard. So for identification purposes we know:

1)      It produces spores from the underside of the leaves and we have images of the sori (a cluster of spore-producing structures).

2)      It has a single stem with alternating leaves growing from it.

3)      We have an image of the exact shape of the leaf.

4)      We know that it reproduces through rhizomes or underground roots and we know what those roots look like.

5)      We know what kind of habitat it likes.

6)      We know what part of the country it lives in.

Is that enough to identify it positively? I think so. First, I’m going to assume that I know it’s a true fern. So let’s start climbing the taxonomy tree. Searching the Internet, I find the University of Michigan’s Sustainable Urban Landscaping Information Series (SULIS) Ferns page. I’m not doing urban landscaping, but it stands to reason that sustainable landscaping would use native plants that grow naturally in the region and habitat which is to be landscaped.

From the information provided on the SULIS page, I’m going to rule out three of the four classes of ferns. What I have is not Psilotopsida of which the only surviving species is the whisk fern. It is not Lycopodiopsida which is comprised of spikemosses, clubmosses and quillworts. It is definitely not Equistopsida which as you might guess contains only horsetails.

That leaves Polypodiopsida (Pteropsida for you Latin-philes). These are the true ferns with 9 sub-classes, 25-300 genera (the plural of genus), and over 12,000 species. Sigh. By the way, SULIS has a page with information about fern propagation which confirms some of my rhizome cutting conjecture, and also reminds me that fern leaves are called fronds, and the spore cases on the underside are called sori.

Let’s get back to our taxonomy. Pteropsida is the class of true ferns within the phylum Pterophyta. I spent some time, unsuccessfully looking for an identification guide online. I’ll need to pick up a good fern field guide. Meanwhile, using Wikipedia, as much as it isn’t a primary research source, I find seven sub-classes: Osmundales, Hymenophyllales, Gleicheniales, Schizaeales, Salviniales, Cyatheales, and Polypodiales. Now I can search each of those and look for enough description to either include or exclude the fern I found in my yard from each subclass.

Wikipedia says 80% of today’s ferns fall into Polypodiales, so let’s start there. Searching again, I find the University of Wisconsin’s  Robert W. Freckman Herbarium page on fern identification, which drills down a bit lower than Polypodiales. Out next choice is between Families. I think my fern is a member of the Dryopteridaceae family, but it’s clear that to go any further, I’m going to need a vocabulary lesson to figure out what terms like rupestral, scandent, dictyostelic, glabrous, pinnatifid, acrostichoid, and too many others to list all really mean. The photos on the site are not sufficient for clear cut identification.

So let’s call it day and come back to this one another time.

Fern Identification Day 2

I came back to the problem of identifying this fern a day later with a fresh idea for searching for online identification guides and it bore fruit immediately -- quite unlike ferns themselves… I finally found a fern identification key at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay.  It’s on the Herbarium page of the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity. As it asks about specific characteristics being present or not, it includes links on the key terms describing what each is and showing photographic examples. Exactly what I need. A virtual Fern Identification for Dummies. Consequently, it also helps me to learn the terms by using the built-in glossary. This will be my primary resource for fern identification.

At Last! Creeping Fragile Fern

By drilling down through their binary identification system I believe the fern I photographed to be of the genus Cystopteris. One species of that genus, Cystopteris protrusa commonly named the creeping fragile fern, seems to be the most likely candidate as it has some keys distinctions from other Cystopteris species.

1) The creeping fragile fern prefers to grown on soil rather than rocks.

2) It is the only species of the Genus in which the rhizome extends out past the last frond and contains buds for the following year’s fronds.

3) Its range includes New England and it is quite common.

It is the second characteristic which, to me nails the identity as Cystopteris protrusa. You’ll remember that I remarked about the rhizome extension and underground buds. This turned out to be a good exercise, a strong learning experience, and it really highlights the need for thoroughness in the field. I literally had to dig a little deeper to find the characteristic that led me to a good identification on this species.  Genuine curiosity is your best tool for exploration.

At present, I am not abotanist. I've had zero training. I am however, very curious, and quite persistent. In a year from now, I'll be pretty darn good at idenitfying plants by site in the field. If you faollow along with me on this blog and put what you lean into practice, you just might be too.

Cystopteris protrusa Propagation Revisited

By the way, based on the fact that we know the buds represent the following year’s ferns, I expect that to propagate the creeping fragile fern, this terminal portion of the rhizome would need to be transplanted. This may, or may not, hold true for other species of the genus.

Wintergreen (gaultheria procumbens)

Wintergreen or eastern teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2010, all rights reserved

I'm going to start off the list of plants that grow in my yard with one that was a very pleasant surprise when I moved here. Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), sometimes called Eastern Teaberry, is one of the edible native plants that lives in the woods in my yard. It is very plentiful, growing in the shade of the forest canopy. Wintergreen is both edible and potentially deadly poisonous, so please read the information contained in the linked article. It happens to be one of the few plants about which I've already written for Examiner.com so I'm going to refer you to the link below for what I wrote there which includes medicinal properties and poison warnings.

• Read more about Wintergreen

Additionally, I will tell you that this spring, 2011, seemed to be a very good year for new wintergreen plants. The reddish young leaves of new plants seemed to be springing up everywhere.

To date, I haven't found any evidence of the plant being eaten by anything (other than myself). It seems to be pretty well left alone by insects and other herbivores. It grows in normal to moist soil conditions in the shade or very dappled sunlight. It gets it's name, as you might guess, because it stays green and keeps its leaves all year, through even the coldest of New England winters. Given the low light environment in which it lives, it must find it more economical of energy and nutrients to preserve its leaves through winter than to try to grow new ones every spring. Keeping the leaves through winter, of course, also gives wintergreen an advantage in the spring time, it can take advantage of the bare canopies overhead while the sun's indirect rays are still relatively weak in the early part of the year.

I recall that in grade school many years ago in southern Vermont, when we learned how to make little terrariums, wintergreen was one of the plants we sought. It needs little light, can live in humid and moist environment, was very slow growing, and of course, doesn't drop its leaves and look dead in the winter. As a bonus, depending upon the plant you found, it might also have a bright red berry to give the terrarium a little bit of color.

Quick Facts about Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

Edible: Yes, in small quantities. Can be fermented to make a tea.
Life cycle: Perennial, evergreen
Propagation: Spreading underground rhizomes, less often by seeds contained in berry
Other uses: Essential oil, medicinal uses (See linked article above for details)
Range: Eastern North America from the Gulf of Mexico and north through out eastern Canada (from the USDA website)
Native or introduced: Native, undomesticated
Poisonous: Yes, in quantity. Wintergreen essential oil has been known to cause fatalities through both ingestion and excessive topical use.