WINTERBERRY

GROUPING OF 'RED SPRITE' WINTERBERRY...

BEAUTIFUL RED BERRIES OF FEMALE PLANTS...

...'RED SPRITE' LOADED WITH FRUIT...

FRUITLESS 'JIM DANDY' MALE POLLlINATOR

Saturday, 9:00 AM.  55 degrees F at the ferrybdock, 54 0n the back porch.  Wind E, calm with occasional light gusts.  Sky overcast but clearing,with fog over the channel.  Humidity 97%, barometer 30.23" and descending, predicting rainy weather again by midweek.
   Buddy and I walked the new Salmo Trail through Pikes Creek Marsh yesterday evening looking for trout and salmon swimming upstream, but saw none.  Still too early, I think.

   Winterberry, Ilex verticilata, is a native northern holly.  It is deciduous, but the female plants are loaded with bright red winter fruit.  The selection 'Red Sprite' is a compact, 3'-4' tall variety that bears heavily.  It needs a male pollinator, the compact 'Jim Dandy', that of course does not bear fruit.  These are spectacular shrubs for the northern winter landscape.  The male and female flowers are, however, insignificant.

  There are other, larger cultivars of the native shrub, or this large native species of northern swamps and rivers can itself make an attractive landscape plant.  It grows in good bottom land, in wet soil, but will also do well in drier locations.  I have seen it growing along the Wisconsin River and elsewhere in northern and central Wisconsin.  The berries are not poisonous, and are good winter wildlife food but are inedible for humans.

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